


We Can Do Good and That Must Be Enough

by EverythingNarrative



Series: World War Etheria [6]
Category: She-Ra and the Princesses of Power (2018)
Genre: AU, Abuse, Canon Rewrite, Cults, Gen, Language, Logistics, Magic and Science, Military, Mind Control, Nobledark, Permanent Injury, Psychological Trauma, Resistance, War, Worldbuilding, rational
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-09
Updated: 2021-03-12
Packaged: 2021-03-13 11:14:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 26
Words: 134,421
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28652577
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EverythingNarrative/pseuds/EverythingNarrative
Summary: The Horde descends from a broken sky.The resistance rises from the artificial underworld.All worlds hang in the balance.Two girls carry the fate of the universe.The labors of reparation will never undo tragedy, but—
Relationships: Adora & Bow & Catra & Glimmer (She-Ra), Adora & Catra & Shadow Weaver | Light Spinner (She-Ra), Adora & Mara (She-Ra), Adora & Razz (She-Ra), Adora/Catra (She-Ra), Bow/Glimmer (She-Ra), Catra & Melog (She-Ra), Darla | Mara's Ship/Entrapta (She-Ra), Entrapta/Hordak (She-Ra), Entrapta/Mara (She-Ra), George/Lance (She-Ra), Kyle/Lonnie/Rogelio (She-Ra), Mara & Razz (She-Ra), Mermista/Sea Hawk (She-Ra), Netossa/Spinnerella (She-Ra), Perfuma/Scorpia (She-Ra)
Series: World War Etheria [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1923616
Comments: 76
Kudos: 111





	1. Blood, Darkness

The lobby chamber of the Crystal Castle has been converted into a fortified defense point. Still in the center, stands the hologram custodian, but sandbags have been piled up and soldiers manning emplaced Yala-model auto cannons guard the place — it’s one of the weapons the Starlight Brigade has in their arsenal aboard the Swift Wind, but has never had the opportunity to deploy on account of it weighing two hundred pounds.

Entrapta, Starla, and Wrodak have never been here, and so take a moment to see the sights.

Netossa leads them to the main elevator, which is in working order, and the eight of them and the three Runestone Princesses descend into the earth.

Adora takes a moment to observe Frosta and Perfuma, who both seem just as tired and weary as Netossa.

“Okay, I can’t take it,” Frosta says. “Why is the Horde General with you?”

“Because I got captured with Queen Glimmer and Chancellor Hordak after the sky broke,” Catra says.

“Leave it be Frosta, the old Horde doesn’t exist anymore,” Netossa says.

“Well, _yeah, duh,_ but she did a _lot_ worse than most of them. Like _violating truce_ in _my kingdom_ and orchestrating the conquest of Salineas and then the whole thing with Flutterina!”

Netossa turns to Frosta. “Now is _not_ the time to go over old grudges.”

“For what it’s worth, your highness,” Catra says. “I’m on your side now. Permanently. And… I realize I have some things to atone for. Sorry about ruining your gala.”

“Yeah, apologize. As if that’ll make it any better. As far as I see it you started this whole mess. _And_ you activated the portal that let Hordak contact Prime.”

Catra looks away.

“Frosta, please,” Glimmer says. “Enough.”

The elevator reaches the lower level, and the doors open to the enormous dome chamber that used to be Light Hope’s inner sanctum.

Now it is a refugee city and makeshift military base. The main street goes from the elevator landing, all the way to the center of the dome, where it spits in two, dividing the space into thirds. Buildings of between two and five floors line the street, all built from modular components; interspersed by alleys and side-streets.

The traffic is mostly by foot, with hovering cargo prams transporting goods and occasionally passengers. They pass a team of women picking up trash and cleaning with industrial vacuums.

Sections of the metal floor have been re-plated with the new plates welded in place; under which run the plumbing. The wiring is strung up overhead, suspended on cables hanging from the domed ceiling above. On the ceiling are also installed vast white panels to both brighten the space, but also absorb sound.

At the pinnacle of the dome hangs a glowing orb of light, standing in for sunlight.

All of them wonder at the sheer scale of this operation

“Holy shit, you guys built an entire city,” Bow says.

Eleven heavily armed people walking down the main street draw attention. Netossa, Perfuma, and Frosta are known quantities, and duly admired for their role in keeping the settlement safe. The others are news — exciting and possibly _good_ news at that — in a place that probably doesn’t get much other than bad news.

Netossa leads them to the district opposite the elevator, which seems markedly less lived-in. Here, the pedestrians are wearing uniform and carrying arms, and there’s a familiar military rigidity to the spacing and design of the buildings. She turns onto a side street, and to a small plaza, where a group of less-than-disciplined almost-uniformed soldiers are lining up at the command of someone who might be an officer.

A large squat building is their destination. Inside is a single large space with a few cubicles built from temporary dividing walls, and at the center of the room is Lonnie engaged in an animated discussion with a _very_ large minotaur man, completely black-skinned.

“Hey, Lonnie, Asterion!” Netossa calls out. “Look who just showed up at the main entrance.”

Lonnie turns to her, and upon seeing their guests, says, just loud enough to be audible: “Oh great, those idiots aren’t dead.”

“Lonnie is in charge?” Catra asks, bewildered.

“She’s better than we ever gave her credit for,” Adora says. “She wrote the book on the resistance’s doctrine.”

Lonnie comes over to them. “So, I see She-Ra is back in action— is that you, Catra?”

“Guilty as charged,” Catra says.

“Yeah, I think you’ll find a lot of people who think this is at least partly your fault here,” Lonnie says. “Let me call up a security council session; everybody needs to be in on this.”

“Everybody?” Adora asks.

* * *

There’s a small auditorium behind the administrative building. The city of Refuge II is small enough that everyone arrives within ten minutes; and even if they were elsewhere, the portal machine network is basic infrastructure by now, used even for intra-city transport.

The Starlight Brigade, and their Runestone Princess escort stick out less than one might imagine in full battle outfit and accompanied by a hologram projected by a drone.

“I don’t believe we’ve met,” Adora says to the minotaur. “I’m Adora, She-Ra.”

“Asterion of Candila, King; formerly anyway,” the man says in a deep bass register.

They shake hands.

Adora thinks for a moment. “Peftasteri’s husband?”

“The same.”

“How are things on the continent of Cranea?”

“Candila has fallen; its throne now occupied by Meteora the usurper, a sworn servant of Prime. A day after you left, Prime began his full scale invasion, and she turned to him almost immediately, declaring herself rightful queen. My wife gathered loyalists, including virtually all of my clansmen, and stormed the palace. Meteora ripped my wife’s powers away with a dark spell, and left her a shell of her former self, then proceeded to use the singular power of the Flame Core to decimate my sworn brothers and sisters. Candila has the highest estimated rate of sanitization cases per capita. So in a word: horrible.”

Adora pales.

“You will find that almost everyone here has loved ones who have been sanitized into Prime’s servitude.”

As the ‘security council’ begins arriving, Adora recognizes several faces: Melissa, Rangers Nightshade and her husband Bramblepelt, Sea Hawk, Castaspella, Shadow Weaver, Kyle and Rogelio, Sweet Bee and Double Trouble, Juliet, and Commandant Cobalt of all people. The rest are various individuals who look either battle-tested, unassuming, or paradoxically both. Every race and nationality is represented, or nearly so.

Nothing like a common enemy to unite against.

About half the auditorium seats are filled, and Lonnie calls the room to order. The Starlight Brigade have taken up the front row of seats.

“All right people. Here’s a rare spell of good news. Adora has returned; for those who don’t remember: she left two weeks ago on the spacecraft called Swift Wind, to save Princess Glimmer from Horde Prime. She is now going to debrief us.”

She gestures to Adora, and Adora gets out of her seat to take the podium.

“Hey,” she says. “So, I haven’t exactly prepared a statement here. As evidenced by us being joined by Queen Glimmer, we were successful. I can also report that She-Ra is back from the dead, and that we’ve been kicking Horde Prime where it hurts, out there in the galaxy.”

There’s a round of applause.

“When we left it was just myself, former Ranger Captain Bow, and Entrapta. Apart from Glimmer, we have also managed to save Horde Captain Catra —”

There’s a jeer from a few of the council members. “ _She’s the reason we’re in this mess!_ ” Adora ignores her.

“— and we have the previous incarnation She-Ra, Damara, with us from across the thousand-year gulf of time, now serving as the custodian spirit of our spacecraft. Last but not least, with us from the world of Nebularia, is Starla, a representative for a sister resistance movement to the one here on Etheria, who are now also using our fabricator tech and doctrines.”

Adora looks over the audience. “I’d like to formally apologize for the radio silence. We… We left too suddenly to make sure long-range secure communications were possible. I must deduce a lot of you thought we were dead. When I look over the audience here, I see a lot of missing faces…”

There’s a lot of downcast glances.

“I can report we have had a modicum of success with rescuing victims of the sanitizing process. A lot of out might have noticed the presence of a Horde clone here. In our attempt to rescue Chancellor Hordak we picked up Wrodak here, and managed to free him from Prime’s control. He is an avid resistance member, and a capable and dependable member of the Swift Wind’s crew.”

“Excuse me, why is this relevant?” The speaker is Bramblepelt, the feliform ranger.

Adora looks at him. “Let me cut to the chase, then. We’ve managed to locate an asset that has once before bested Horde Prime. On a planet called Krytis in the Regulus system, which is the homeworld of the feliform race, as it happens, we found an entity of comparable power to She-Ra: one named Melog. Catra is the wielder of this power.”

Melissa stands up. “If I may, Adora, a lot of us here have been fighting a losing battle against Horde Prime in your absence, and feel an amount of resentment against you. I think perhaps giving a talk about all the thrilling adventures you and your friends have been on while we’ve been getting killed and sanitized is a little insensitive.”

Adora frowns. “Be that as it may, I’m here to say that the Starlight Brigade —” she gestures at her crew “— is here to fully support the Etherian resistance against Horde Prime. I will be deferring to the judgment of those with better knowledge of the conflict than myself.”

There’s a weak-hearted applause. Adora takes a seat, and Glimmer stands, heading over to Lonnie and exchanging a few words. Lonnie nods.

“I would like to call a meeting of the Princess Alliance and close friends thereof, such as it were; if we may have the room.”

Most of the security council file out, leaving Lonnie, Kyle and Rogelio, Netossa, Perfuma, Frosta, Melissa, Sea Hawk, Sweet Bee and Double Trouble, Juliet and Castaspella, Shadow Weaver, and King Asterion.

“Who did we lose to Prime?” Adora asks. The dead do not matter.

“Peekablue,” Sweet Bee says, quietly. Double Trouble puts and arm around her shoulders.

“Spinnerella,” Netossa adds.

“ _Oh no,_ ” Bow mutters.

“Mermista,” Sea Hawk says. Frosta stands by him, the torso of her armor folded back.

Adora winces.

“Meteora,” Asterion says.

“Scorpia,” Perfuma adds.

Catra looks away.

“Huntara,” Melissa says.

“Micah,” Castaspella adds.

Glimmer covers her mouth.

“Hordak,” Entrapta adds.

“That’s like, half of us,” Adora says, bewildered. “How did this happen?”

“That’s not the worst,” Perfuma says. “The worst part is the letters. They send us letters; pleading with us to come join them.” She takes out her communicator. “ _Dearest Perfuma, not a day goes by that I do not think of you. Prime is merciful and just; it will never be too late to join us, and I will always be waiting for you in his light._ ”

“Every day,” Netossa adds. “Spinny uses our unborn child against me.”

“Mermista holds it against me that I have our daughter,” Sea Hawk says.

“ _Oh thank the stars,_ ” Adora mutters under her breath.

“Huntara pleads with me to spend the last few years of her life with her,” Melissa says.

“Psychological warfare,” Catra says. “Clever.”

“That’s what he does,” Starla adds, “Prime. Everyone that falls under his control becomes a weapon against their loved ones.”

“And Peekablue?” Adora asks.

Sweet Bee shakes her head. “I purposefully don’t communicate with him, at all; it is too dangerous.”

“He can talk people into taking their own lives,” Double Trouble adds.

“Tell me how it happened.”

* * *

“Peekablue got compromised before he was even sanitized, that is the only way I can get it to make sense,” Sweet Bee says in a monotone. "By chance, a sanitizing wasp entered my sphere of influence and I managed to gain control over it, learning of its nature. Horde Prime realized he no longer had the moment of surprise, and began his cleansing phase that same day.

“Blue suggested we test it on him under controlled circumstances, so he could use the connection to uncover Prime’s weakness. I should have refused, but… Instead, as soon as it had implanted, he used his power on me, and _spoke_ to me. I activated a silence charm, and he used the distraction to escape his bonds, hit Deetee with dagger coated in a paralyzing venom, and then portal out.”

Double Trouble comforts her.

“And then you two didn’t tell the rest of us immediately,” Netossa said.

“Netossa,” Castaspella says with a warning tone. "Micah, myself, and Shadow Weaver have been working on the Mystacorian First-Ones’ glyphs, and we found the need to track down a certain source. A sympathetic tracking spell indicated that the book we needed was in Elberon, so Micah went there with Netossa, Spinnerella, and Frosta as security, all under disguise spells.

“With intel from Peekablue, Prime pre-empted them by sanitizing everyone in the city. Upon arrival, Micah and the others were swamped and a swarm of wasps descended on them. Correctly gauging himself as less valuable than his three companions, he stayed behind to buy time.”

“They still managed to get Spinnerella,” Netossa says. "I must have left her side for all of five heartbeats in that place, and it was enough for Prime to get her. We didn’t carry around otoscope then, so I didn’t check her. I should never have brought her along, I don’t know what I was thinking; she’s pregnant.

“She played along all the way back to Refuge I, and then Sweet Bee detected her and things went to shit. I took the fight into the sky to get her away from the refugees.”

“Prime used that as his cue to launch an attack. We lost thirty percept in that cock-up alone,” Lonnie adds. “I’ve been working on our evacuation plans for Refuge II ever since.”

Asterion clears his throat. "About concurrently with that, Princess Meteora was sanitized. It is difficult to say when exactly, but she is fond of her walled gardens. Having just received communications from Sweet Bee, Peftasteri knew immediately something was up when Meteora obliquely suggested they look into opening diplomatic relations with Prime.

"She fled the palace using the portal network, and quickly rounded up her loyalists and a significant number of my militant clansmen. She secured the support of Huntara of the Wastes as well, and launched a full scale incursion and assault on the palace, intending to capture her sister by force.

“Instead, Meteora broke open Huntara’s protective suit and the huntress was sanitized; then the two of them in concert overpowered Peftasteri, but instead of sanitizing her, injected her with the Runestone-blocking serum and received the aid of King Micah to conduct a dark ritual that severed Peftasteri’s bond with the Flame Core permanently, transferring the undivided power of it to Meteora.”

“When Asterion got in touch about the situation in Candila, I concluded that Peekablue’s gift if utilized by Prime would lead to our swift defeat,” Sweet Bee continues. “I had in store a suite of charms which would counteract his power; he and I had developed them for such an eventuality.”

“With those in hand,” Perfuma continues, "Mermista, Scorpia, Double Trouble and myself infiltrated the Enchanted Grottos. We knew we’d be walking into a trap, but believed that Sweet Bee’s countermeasures and ARW equipment could adequately hide us from Peekablue.

“This did turn out to be the case, but we were overrun; Horde Prime has gotten his hands on ARW equipment from the elements of the Etherian Horde that joined him. He used it, and sanitized Mermista. Scorpia being immune, stayed behind to fend off Mermista, letting Double Trouble and I escape with Peekablue.”

Sweet Bee nods. “We’re keeping him in an induced coma, with ARW serum, and under all possible counter-measures myself and Shadow Weaver have been able to conjure.”

“That hasn’t stopped Prime,” Shadow Weaver says. “He has again employed Micah to conduct a dark ritual which has linked Spinnerella to the Hyperlens, making her the only extant dual Wielder. I also suspect he has cast the Spell of Obtainment; more successfully than I, at that.”

“She’s not as powerful as Peekablue,” Netossa adds, “but she can still talk you out of your will to fight. Scorpia and Mermista are both in a class of their own when it comes to power, Huntara and Meteora fight together. Micah has constructed a marble golem to protect his person. Shadow Weaver says he’ likely transferring the rebound from his dark spells to disposable clones provided by Prime.”

“When he isn’t mass-sanitizing entire cities, he sends a legion of clones with one of them for support, and massacres everyone, broadcasting the worst scenes from it to the entire world with the spires,” Lonnie concludes.

There’s a long silence. It’s a painful story to tell; fresh wounds, like death by a thousand cuts.

“He wants us weak,” Catra says. “He’s not just out for conquest, he is out to ensure we can pose no threat to him, while he goes for the real prize, the Heart of Etheria.”

“I understood the Heart was not operational anymore,” Castaspella says.

“That won’t stop him,” Adora says. “He’ll just rebuild whatever he needs to reinvigorate it. He told me as much to his face, before he made Catra fight me to the pain.”

Adora stands up. “I know what it’s like to have the people you care about the most taken from you; I feel your pain. Entrapta? I want Peekablue aboard the Swift Wind; attend to him and remove his wasp.”

“She can _do_ that?” Sweet Bee asks.

“I am the most pre-eminent surgeon of my generation,” Entrapta says. “And that was before I became the wielder of the Sky Stone. The problem is he has already been sanitized for almost two weeks. It might not be possible to remove it without rendering him brain damaged.”

Sweet Bee starts crying. Double Trouble attempts to comfort her.

“Hey, Double Trouble, tell her to chin up,” Catra says. “Adora cured me of a fatal gunshot through the brain case. Her boyfriend is going to be just fine.”

“ _Our_ boyfriend, Kitten,” Double Trouble corrects.

Sweet Bee looks up at Adora. “Is that true? You can heal him?”

“Most likely,” Adora says. “And once that is done, we’re going to get some backup to help with getting our friends back.”

“Who?” Netossa asks. “We’re _it,_ Adora.”

Adora frowns. “I have an outstanding debt buried in the Candilan royal crypt.”

“Princess Cometa?” Asterion asks. “What madness are you suggesting?”

Adora looks at him. “Did you miss the part where I can _bring back the dead?_ Cometa is dead because of me. I owe it to her to try.”

“I’ll come along,” Catra says. “Seeing as I’m the one who killed her.”

* * *

Adora gives them all a day’s leave.

“Castaspella.”

Bow approaches her as the meeting is breaking up.

“Ah, Ranger Bow; let me guess, you’re wondering about your fathers. Rest assured they are quite safe. The library is over in the Eastern Third, just ask for directions if you can’t find it.”

Bow bows his head. “Thank you.”

“Hey Auntie,” Glimmer says, coming up behind them. She latches on to Bow’s arm.

“Glimmer; I am relieved to know you are safe.”

“I’m heading out,” Bow says. “I need to see my dads.”

“I’ll come with. I’m sure they’ll be thrilled to hear about the two of us,” Glimmer says.

“The two of you?” Castaspella asks. “It finally happened, then.”

“What do you mean?” Glimmer asks.

Castaspella giggles. “Your mother and I; we used to make wagers on whether and when you two would end up an item. I won; she predicted you would turn twenty first.”

Glimmer looks away. “Casta, we’re going to get dad back; I’ll make sure of it.”

“I must say,” Castaspella says, “with She-Ra on our side, it seems more possible than ever. But you two get going now.”

Glimmer squeezes Bow’s arm. “Wanna make the trip be my inaugural teleport?”

“But you’ve never been there?” Bow asks.

“I’m not going to let that stop me,” Glimmer says and blinks them.

* * *

Of course George and Lance would fall in love with the idea of running a public library. Such institutions are unheard of in Brightmoon, but common in the Hordelands.

Bow walks in, holding Glimmer’s hand.

Lance is stocking books in a shelf by the door, casts a glance aside at the chime of the bell, and nearly falls off his ladder.

“Hey dad,” Bow says.

“George!” he yells “Come quick! Bow is back!”

A thundering of footsteps sound out, and George turns the corner, winded. “My boy!” he yells triumphantly.

Bow is swept up in first one, then another loving fatherly embrace, despite his armor.

“Goodness, look at you! Just the same as when you left, and yet _so different!_ ” George says. “What happened out there?”

“I’ve been piloting a spacecraft for two weeks,” Bow says.

“And I see the Queen is with you,” Lance says. “So the rescue mission was a success!”

“A great deal more than that,” Glimmer says, and takes Bow’s hand. “George, Lance, I would like to take the opportunity to ask your for your blessing; fate would have it that I’ve fallen incurably in love with your son, and I am happy to say on his behalf that the feeling is mutual.”

“Damn it, Glimmer,” Bow mutters, blushing.

“I could hardly ask for a better daughter-in-law,” Lance says.

“ _Dad!_ ” Bow says.

“ _Am I hearing right, or did my little brother just land himself_ another _Princess?_ ” a voice comes from behind a bookshelf.

“I’m a Queen, actually,” Glimmer corrects.

A dark-skinned man, heavily set, but handsome, bald but for a voluminous curly black beard, and visible Bow’s senior by at least a handful of years, comes into view. There is zero family resemblance, as expected. He is dressed much the same as George and Lance — black trousers, white button-down, and a yellow waistcoat; a uniform of sorts.

“Blade?!” Bow says, surprised.

“We’re all here,” Blade says. “By which I mean, in Refuge, not here at the Library.” He walks up to them, and takes a deep bow before Glimmer. “Your Majesty.”

Glimmer laughs. “Please, I’m Queen only in name by this point.”

Blade stands up. “I am very pleased to make your acquaintance, I am _Vladimir_ , but please, _please_ call me Blade.”

“Blade is my sixth-oldest brother,” Bow says. “And a _proper_ historian, unlike me.”

“And look what I’ve done with it,” Blade says. “Moved to the Fright Zone and worked at a library for ten years!”

“Charmed,” Glimmer says. “You moved to the Hordelands? Willingly?”

“Blade was always a free spirit,” Lance says, patting him on the shoulder.

“At first we approved of it about as much as when Bow said he wanted to be a forest walker,” George says. “But we came around. Say, your Majesty, do you want to stay for dinner?”

“I would love to.”

* * *

Damara’s telepresence drone zips across Refuge II, and down to a small apartment in the domestic third of the city. The window is open — not that there’s any weather to keep out down here, only noise and prying eyes.

She floats it inside, where a little old lady is sitting by the only table in the living room, carefully transcribing a text in First-Ones’ glyphs, displayed in photographs on her communicator, onto paper in the common alphabet. A cup of cold tea stands next to her.

Razz looks up at the drone. “Shoo, what is a nosy drone doing here? Bah, shouldn’t have to close my windows!”

Damara materializes her hologram form, and moves her locus of consciousness. “Good evening, Razz.”

Razz nearly falls off her chair. “Mara?”

“Yeah, it’s me. I— I’m back from the dead; of a sort.”

Razz looks her up and down. “As a Hologram? What trickery is this?”

“A spacecraft, actually. Can I invite you on board so I can give you an actual hug?”

A portal opens there in the living room. The hologram vanishes. On the other side of the portal, is Damara. Flesh and blood, or nealy so.

Razz gets up, and walks though, with wonder, into her daughter’s arms.

“Adora’s here too,” Damara says. “She’ll be done with some business soon, then we can all catch up.”

* * *

Adora lays a hand on Peekablue’s forehead, and his entire body is lit from within with the glow of starlight.

By his other side, Entrapta wheels away a rolling table full of used surgical implements, and a glass dish with a lightly grilled sanitizing wasp.

Sweet Bee comes up beside him.

“Let him wake up on his own,” Adora cautions.

Out in the hallway, Double Trouble is watching from a distance.

“Hey.”

They turn, to see Catra. “Oh, hi kitten.”

“What are you standing in the hallway for?”

“Oh; I just — this is their moment, you know?”

Catra nods. “Whatever.”

Double Trouble rubs their forehead. “I suppose I should apologize to you; I treated you with a breathtaking level of unkindness I now realize.”

Catra raises an eyebrow. “An apology from _you?_ Should I buy a lottery ticket?”

“Love changes people,” Double Trouble says.

Catra nods. That she agrees with.

“What happened to you?” Double Trouble asks, looking her up and down.

Catra holds out a hand, and channels darkness into it, turning it black. “You know, I have _no_ idea.”

Double Trouble blinks. Then holds out a hand and it too becomes wreathed in shadow as well. “I think I might; do you shapeshift by any chance?”

Catra grows her arm into the longer, stronger, clawy-er version, and then back. “Just a bit; but I’m hoping to expand my repertoire.”

“If you can stand the thought of me…” Double Trouble says, “I would be willing to teach you a thing or two. To make up for what I did.”

Inside the infirmary, Peekablue stirs, and Sweet Bee gives a gasp of relief. Double Trouble digs their nails into the door frame.

Catra puts a hand on Double Trouble’s back, and shoves them into the room. “Just get in there, you idiot.”

Then she quietly slinks into the shadows, and portals back underground with Bad News.

* * *

Everyone else is occupied for the night; even Starla and Wrodak, who has somehow gotten Netossa to show them around Refuge. Wrodak’s taken to wearing a hood and a veil, which reminds Catra a bit too much of Shadow Weaver.

So Catra just lingers in the town square of Refuge II, inconspicuous by her power. Watching people go about their lives.

She sees Lonnie emerge from the military district, and for a moment considers going up and saying hi, only for Kyle and Rogelio to come along, hand-in-hand. They meet up, and Lonnie kisses each of them in turn.

Of course it’s those three.

There’s a pain in her chest, and Catra considers ordering a drink at the cafe where she is occupying a table without anyone being able to see her. Nothing costs money here; not in a real sense. You pay with your communicator, and everyone is paid a pittance of cash by the day, just for existing. The only tax is a wealth tax, paid daily as well. Fabricators have destroyed the idea of a market economy completely, and it’s only been a month.

“Catra, fancy meeting you here.”

Catra looks over, seeing Shadow Weaver.

“You know, you’re the last person I want to talk to,” Catra says.

“And yet you remain.”

Shadow Weaver takes a seat. She is masked, as usual, but now also and wearing pants, which is _very_ unusual.

“What do you want?” Catra asks.

“To give you a tip. For old time’s sake,” Shadow Weaver says.

Catra looks at her, raising an eyebrow sardonically. “Shadow Weaver, if we did things for old time’s sake, I’d be ripping your windpipe out with my teeth right now.”

“Fine. Listen, there’s a significant amount of the paramilitary which is made up of feliform former insurrectionists from the Hordelands. The ‘Magicat Restorationists’ they call themselves.”

“And I care why?”

“It’s an opportunity to gain some political clout; by my reckoning you’re bankrupt on that account, are you not?”

Catra draws Bane, and lays it on the table, with her hand on top of it. “Than you for the tip. As payment, I’m going to refrain from stabbing you for having the audacity to approach me when I clearly want to be alone.”

Then she gets up and vaults the little fence, fencing in the table arrangement in front of the cafe.

* * *

Catra walks the streets, aimlessly. Letting her intuition guide her steps.

She stops.

There’s a discoloration of the steel floor here. She looks around — it’s a perfectly ordinary little residential area.

She bends down and scrapes at the surface with a claw, sniffing it.

Rancid fat, burnt flesh, hidden under a heavy cloak of cleansing chemicals. Crematorium ash? The mark on the ground shows a clear directionality, originating from an epicenter, which is obscured by the adjacent building. Catra looks under the building, between the foundation stones, where the plumbing runs.

It extends under.

A macabre theory pops into her head. There must have been a blast here, of sorts, of incredible power, which vaporized a person.

There’s something else here — a kind of silvery metal, like webbing, seemingly embedded in the steel. Getting on her knees, she stars scraping at it with her claws.

As she extracts the coherent web-like structure, balling it up into her hand, it begins congealing as if under surface tension, until it forms a sphere in her hand, the size of walnut. Dense.

“Strange,” Catra mutters to herself, pocketing the object. She’ll get Entrapta to look at it later.

She continues onwards, from the alley onto the side street, and encounters a familiar face.

A feliform woman, middle-aged, calico fur, and red-green heterochromia. She’s wearing a dapper set of slacks, tied with a tight belt, around a button-down shirt; in one she has a canvas bag of groceries.

It takes a moment for the realization to drop for either of them.

“You’re that crazy kid from the prison,” Leijon says. “The one who maimed three people. How did you get so freaky tall?”

“Catra,” Catra supplies. “I— I’d like to think I’m not that person anymore. You wouldn’t believe me about the height.”

“Leijon,” Leijon says, just to give her name. “What, are you lost?”

Catra shakes her head. “Just walking about, alone.”

“Hey, so; the offer still stands, from back then, if you remember. You’d be better off with some company.”

“You wouldn’t happen to be part of something called the Magicat Restorationists?” Catra asks.

“Where did you hear about that?” Leijon says. She looks up and down the street. Mostly empty, then steps closer. “I mean, it’s not so underground now that we’re all underground, but we used to be pretty serious about overthrowing the Horde government. Now we’re just fighting to have a homeworld to go back to. Are you interested?”

Catra shrugs. “Just as a side-gig maybe.”

“Say, are you about twenty years old?”

Catra nods.

“Hm. Come with. I have dinner guests over; if you’re hungry, what’s one more?”

* * *

Leijon’s apartment is tiny — everyone’s is. “Nightshade, Bramblepelt, Clawdia, I’ve got the wine and dessert, and I accidentally picked up a stray.”

Catra follows the smaller woman — everyone is smaller now, compared to her — into the living room with adjoining kitchen.

There by the table, sit a midnight-black woman with striking green eyes, on the lap of a tabby-brown man; both of them look like the out-doors sort of people.

In the kitchen stands a grey-furred woman, somewhere in her mid-thirties, looking like her life has been anything but easy-going up until now: her hair is greying perhaps a bit much for that age range; done in a loose braid.

Her ears have a copious amount of piercings, and under her black apron she is wearing a purple top and skirt. She is standing over a stockpot, and a delightful smell fills the apartment. At Catra’s entrance, she looks up with brilliantly yellow eyes.

“Catra, meet Nightshade and her husband Bramblepelt; Brightmoon citizens, such as it were, supportive of our cause. And responsible for our meal, Clawdia. Nightshade, Bramblepelt, Clawdia, this is the crazy kid I met in prison.”

Catra can’t help but look at Clawdia — there’s something strange; like she’s seen her before.

“Leijon, the wine?” Clawdia says. “I need a dollop for the acidity.” She tastes the stew with a finger, and wipes it in her apron.

Leijon hands the bottle to her, and looks from her to Catra, and then back again. “You know, if I didn’t know better, I’d say you two were related,” she says, with a wry smile. “I mean, disregard the lovely young woman’s heterochromia; that yellow eye, and the jawline. What do you say, Nightshade?”

“I can see it,” Nightshade says.

“Say, Catra, you’re about twenty years old.”

Catra wrests her eyes away from Clawdia, to look at Leijon. “Yeah, why?”

“And, are you per _any_ conceivable chance, an orphan?”

Catra glances over at Clawdia, who is holding the wine and a bottle opener, but not proceeding as one would. Just holding them. Looking at Catra.

“Yeah.”

“Raised in or around Capital?”

Catra nods.

Clawdia drops the wine, the full bottle gives a hearty ‘thunk’ as it hits the floor.

“It’s— it’s you,” Clawdia mutters.

A curled knot of emotion in Catra’s stomach unties itself.

“M— Mom?”

“Say, isn’t that just the cat’s own luck? Our little anarchist’s dinner turns family reunion,” Leijon says and grabs a beer from the table, opening the bottle cap with her hands. “A toast?”

* * *

Catra storms down the stairs and out the door, into the deserted side street, above in the dome, the central light has been dimmed, casting Refuge II in twilight.

“Catra, _wait!_ ” Clawdia calls out behind her.

Catra stops, despite herself.

“It’s… It’s a lovely name,” Clawdia says.

Catra turns around, looking at the smaller woman. “ _Why did you abandon me?_ ”

“Because I was _fifteen years old,_ and…”

“And what?”

“Come inside, _please,_ ” Clawdia says with raw emotion in her voice. “I _really_ can’t have this conversation in the middle of the street.” She’s clutching her arms.

“Do you _know_ what they do to kids in the foster system?!” Catra says. “I don’t remember anything from before I was five and _ran away_ from the orphanage! And then the juvie gang that took me in told me that was _good!_ ”

Clawdia stars crying. “I know. I know, I know, Catra. I know exactly what it was like back then; where do you think I came from?!”

Tears come to Catra’s eyes.

“When I met Leijon and she helped me get out, I spent all my free time volunteering; hoping to find you by chance! Did you know that?! I worked myself half to death for orphan kids, for _you!_ ”

Catra’s rage falters.

And then she’s taking a step towards her, and the step becomes a walk, and the walk becomes a jog, and then she’s scooping Clawdia into a hug so tight it hurts.

“ _You’re squeezing me,_ ” Clawdia croaks.

Catra lets go. “Sorry.”

But Clawdia doesn’t draw back. She rests against her chest. “You ran away?”

“Until I was seven, then I got hurt and went back into the system.”

“Did you get adopted? I must have been to every major orphanage in Capital at some point or another…”

“Sort of,” Catra says. “And then I went to the military academy when I was ten.”

“That explains it,” Clawdia says. “I only got out after that.”

“Let’s go inside,” Catra says, gently putting her arms around the other woman.

Her mother. Her actual real mother. Who apparently loves her — or at least the idea of her.

“I’ll trade you: I’ll tell you about the horrible witch that raised me, if you tell me about whatever it was you got out of.”

“Only if you eat my food.”

“Deal.”

* * *

Leijon is sitting in the window to the street, sipping her beer.

“You’re a horrible voyeur, Leijon,” Bramblepelt says.

“If your vice lends itself to a good cause, is it really a vice?” Leijon shoots back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Clawdia by @JustPigeonBlue](https://twitter.com/justpigeonblue/status/1329181382849990657)


	2. From Death, Of Life

Catra wanders through the shadows, fearless. The darkness is hers, and hers alone; she’s the most dangerous thing in it.

Part of her wants to find a little place to sit down with a drink and have a think, but — responsibility asserts itself, and she sets out for the elevator banks.

“Hey miss, elevators are for authorized personnel only,” a guardswoman says as she approaches the landing.

Catra stops, looking at her. “I need to get up to the surface?”

“At this hour?”

“Just tell me how to get up there.”

“Are you daft? Call a portal.”

Catra slaps her forehead. “Right, guess I’ve had a bit too much to drink.” Bramblepelt and Nightshade _did_ run down to the corner for booze, _twice._

The guardswoman is a tall minotaur; she eyes Catra suspiciously. “You’re not up to something, are you?”

“I wouldn’t tell you if I was,” Catra says.

“I’m going to need your name and affiliations,” the minotaur says.

Catra briefly considers just turning invisible. “I’m with the Starlight Brigade.” No recognition. “You know, _She-Ra?_ We walked down the main street earlier? We’re here to save the world?”

“Oh. Well, good,” the woman says. “Do… Do you think I could get her autograph, She-Ra?”

Catra snickers. “Really?”

“Hey, she saved my life a few months back; it’s because of her I put the life of a desert robber behind me.”

“Wait,” Catra says. “Crimson Wastes? Tung Lashor’s band?”

“Yeah? How did you know?”

Catra draws Bane. “Because I cut his head off.”

Realization dawns in the minotaur’s eyes. Her hand goes to the Yala-Zev at her hip, and she takes a step back, hand outstretched towards Catra. “Holy _shit_ you’re that maniac — sorry, forget I ever asked, please be on your way _now,_ ma’am.”

Catra sighs, and turns invisible.

A few streets away she calls up the Swift Wind’s portal device, and gets a portal back to the Swift Wind. Perhaps there’s downsides to being a dangerous thing that lurks in the shadows.

* * *

Adora is brushing her teeth in the spacious bathroom of their shared quarters, slightly buzzed — even if it was only a family dinner, with Razz, Damara, and Entrapta.

They’ve moved to a couple’s suite because there’s no bed that fits Catra’s new size in the foot end, while also fitting inside a one-person room.

“Hey Adora.”

Adora leans back to look through the door, and sees Catra enter. She spits and rinses out her toothbrush. “Catra, where did you go all evening?”

“I was roped into dinner with an old acquaintance. Prison buddy.”

“Pray tell?”

Catra collapses in the sofa of the small lounge-area. “I… Met my birth mother. By total chance.”

Adora pulls the desk chair up, and takes a seat.

* * *

It starts with the military. Catra’s grandfather was a soldier, and died ignominiously in the beginning of the previous conquest. Catra’s grandmother then proceeded to crawl into a bottle, leaving kids, Clawdia being the middle child of five siblings, to fend for themselves. An orphanage took them in, and her two older brothers were roped into the military, never to be seen again; the youngest died of disease. They grew up with neglect, beatings, and borderline malnutrition under the corrupt rationing schemes before the bloody second agricultural reform.

Her sister got adopted, and Clawdia at thirteen, she was declared an unadoptable adult and kicked out. No skills, no support, no prospects; she could barely read and write. A nice man picked her up off the street. He later turned out to be not so nice, and in return for room and board she had to…

Full-service sex work, is the term in the military code of conduct for R&R leave.

Then came the drugs, of course, to ‘dull the pain’ and keep her complacent. Her pimp smartly never let her service feliform clients for fear of pregnancy.

The next two years of her life was a blur of pain and intoxication. At some point, a particularly wealthy client paid extra, and nine months later the last of Clawdia’s spirits shattered when under the pain of withdrawal, she was commanded to leave her two-month old kit on a doorstep, without even a name.

Three years later, her pimp offended some elements of organized crime, and ended up tragically falling off a fire escape to his death. Mama Leijon took over his girls, and put most of them to gainful work running her illicit businesses. Clawdia learned to read and write from the other women, but never took up book-keeping. She did the cooking and the cleaning, and ended up with a slap on the wrist when Mama Leijon got put away for ‘tax evasion,’ and her criminal empire dismantled in the ‘law-and-order’ movement that immediately followed the successful conquest that had claimed her father.

With the pittance she had stowed away, she managed to get her life on track within the bounds of the law: cooking, cleaning, laundering where ever it was needed. Whatever she could spare, of time and money, she donated to orphanages, and dreamt of one day meeting that brown kitten with the yellow and blue eyes.

Through volunteering she heard of labor unions and promptly joined one. Through unions she met anarchists. And then the horde started loosing, and she started cooking for their secret meetings — it paid better.

Then the sky broke open, and it all became moot.

* * *

Catra doesn’t tell Adora all that. Most of it isn’t hers to tell. Leijon, knowing the story already, sent Bramblepelt and Nightshade out for more booze before the bad parts.

What she does tell — about the orphanage kicking her out, and being forced into sex work, getting out, and getting back up — is enough that by the time she finishes her tale, Adora wipes a tear away.

“What are you crying for, softie?” Catra asks.

“I’m drunk,” Adora says. “And you met your mom! Aren’t you happy?”

Catra looks to the side. “We’re very different people. She’s used to rolling over, playing things safe, biding her time. I— I…”

“Clawed a woman’s eyes out when you were eleven?”

Catra nods.

“You should make planes to meet with her again.”

“I don’t know—”

“I _insist._ You need _courage_ to make your darkness, don’t you?”

Catra nods.

Adora stands up. “Let’s get some sleep; we have work to do tomorrow.”

Catra gets up and takes her coat off, noticing the heavy object in her pocket.

“Oh; another weird thing,” Catra says.

“Hm?”

She shows the ball of silvery metal. “I found this big patch of residue on the floor down in the dome, like crematorium ash — it had been cleaned but the stain was there. In it I found this silvery metal and when I dug it out, it formed itself into a ball.”

“That would probably be me.”

Adora reaches out and Catra hands off the ball of metal.

“Yeah. That patch of ash is the old She-Ra, and this is what’s left of Aegis. Without the artificial Runestone the First-Ones used to control her, this is a paperweight. The blast when I destroyed it vaporized She-Ra’s body.”

“Oh. Cool.”

Adora hands the ball back to her. Catra puts it back in her pocket.

* * *

Catra doesn’t get much sleep. There’s one confounding worry that plagues her: she’s hardly told Clawdia anything about herself. _What if she only likes me because she doesn’t know what I’ve done?_

* * *

Adora and Catra wake up early; military style. They get dressed, head for the mess, and eat a hearty sandwich breakfast — Catra’s appetite is normalizing to something appropriate for an athletic person weighing two hundred pounds.

“So, what’s the plan?” Catra asks.

“We’re going to the Candilan royal palace, to the crypt, to exhume the magically preserved remains of Princess Cometa,” Adora says. “Then I am going to use starlight to try and bring her back to life, and hopefully she will still have a connection to the Flame Core. If all goes well, Meteora’s power may be diminished by it — I don’t know if you’ve read the reports, but she is _terrifying_ ; could probably kill _us_ if we’re not careful — and we’ll have another Runestone Wielder on our side.”

Catra nods. “How do we get there? We’ve got options.”

Adora frowns. “I _was_ thinking Glimmer’s teleportation could do the trick. She’s been to the crypt, and could get us there in one jump.”

“But?”

“It might be _really_ dangerous. There could be sanitizing wasps, clones, drones, not to mention sanitized Candilan soldiers, Meteora, Huntara, and that _thing_ Horde Prime gave them to protect themselves.”

Catra nods. “Why don’t we just portal there, and I’ll make us invisible; then we walk in grab the corpse, and walk out.”

“That could work too.”

* * *

They use the portal device in board the Swift Wind. Catra imbues darkness into it, and somehow hides the _portal itself_ turning it into the barest shimmer in the air.

Adora takes Catra’s hand, and the world shifts, subtly around them.

“Ready?” Catra asks.

“Let’s go.”

They step through the portal, from the cargo hold of the Swift Wind onto an open field outside Candila, amidst the green summer grains, only just beginning to yellow.

Adora looks up to see Horde Dropships against the night sky, come and go, languidly. Illuminated spires dot the horizon. It’s the middle of the night here. Beyond the steel walls of the city, light blooms into the night.

The night air smells fresh, with just a tinge of distant smoke; the summer has been kind to the land.

The portal vanishes behind them.

Adora looks at Catra, and nods. Catra takes the lead. Wordlessly they walk, hand-in-hand, through the grain; somehow without trampling any of it.

They reach a dirt track, and set into a light jog, towards the City of Red Iron.

Rather than attempt the gate, which is surely shut and guarded, Catra leads them up to the wall, a quarter mile distant.

There, she holds out her right hand and calls on Bad News, to make them a short portal through; this one also hidden.

They step onto a cobbled street inside the city, lit by gas light lamp posts. The buildings are timber and brick, limewashed various shades of ochre.

Catra looks at Adora.

  
_Where’s the castle?_   


The voice echoes in her head, softly spoken. It’s like she’s imagining Catra speaking to her — something she hasn’t done ever since… Ever since Catra came back into her life, really.

Adora shakes her head. She doesn’t know her way around; the one time she was there, before heading to the Crimson Wastes, they had a pair of Candilan royal guards to show them where they needed to go.

Catra points at Stella Nova, hanging behind Adora’s back.

  
_Take us up._   


Adora reaches back and plucks her shield from the air, then casually tosses it down; it stabilizes a foot off the ground, and Catra steps on it, helping Adora up by the hand, and hooking one arm around Adora’s waist.

They rise up into the sky, and Catra scouts over the rooftops, pointing to the castle.

Adora looks at Catra, and feels the closeness of her body, and for some reason fells spiders crawling in her stomach.

  
_We should hurry. Jump._   


Holding on to Catra’s hand, they both leap off the shield. Adora lands heavy on both feet, crouching deep; no doubt causing a trembling in nearby buildings. Catra lands light and gracefully. But it doesn’t feel like she’s clumsy compared to her; just different.

Catra takes off running, pulling Adora behind her. Choosing the path through the streets by her superior senses and instincts. Adora is at heart a soldier, a front-line combatant; the height of Catra’s career took her to head of the special forces, and it shows.

As they near the castle, the buildings and pavement get progressively nicer. Cobbles making way for broad paving stones, timber and brick making way for marble and elaborate ironwork. Adora remembers from her previous visit the shantytown they passed by the river, and is partly relieved she doesn’t have to behold that heart-wrenching sight again.

The streets are patrolled by city guards and Horde clones in equal measure. Additionally, white-painted drones fly by overhead, with the whirring of ducted fans.

Another steel wall separates the palace grounds from the rest of the city.

Catra portals them through once more, and Adora recognizes the are. She squeezes Catra’s hand, getting her attention — brilliant blue and yellow eyes — and points to the northern wing of the palace.

They make their way across the vast grounds, past the guard barracks and the stables, past the servant dorms; staying low, keeping to the shadows and out of the lamplight, and for the most part avoiding the guards. Not that Catra seems insecure in their invisibility, but it pays to be cautious.

The entrance to the catacombs are guarded by two soldiers in the red-and-polished uniform of the royal guards, armed with practical spears, and Horde-issue guns.

Catra draws Bane, her blade. Adora squeezes her hand; then gestures across her neck, followed by a wagging finger.

Catra nods, and sheathes it. Carefully they walk out in sight of the guards, and directly past them. The door is heavy, wooden. Catra portals them through it.

Inside, it is pitch dark and Catra pulls Adora on ahead, until they are way out of earshot of the guards outside.

“We’re alone. You can make some light.”

Adora holds out a hand, and starlight floods the space. White marble walls greet them. “This way,” Adora says, going on ahead; she doesn’t let go of Catra’s hand.

They reach an offshoot of the main tunnel, and there, a few empty niches down is Cometa’s tomb, sealed by a white marble slab.

Adora grabs hold of one side of the heavy stone, and Catra understands her plan, grabbing hold of the other. They lift and gingerly move a thousand pounds of rock aside, almost noiselessly. Not that She-Ra couldn’t do it alone, but that might break the delicate slab.

The heavy sarcophagus lid also, they move together.

There lies Cometa. Strangely preserved, wrapped in a burial shroud with her face uncovered — the spell of timeless repose is not quite infallible, and its effect has likely faded; but it is no dried mummy or rotted corpse. Catra steps back, and her heel bumps against something, making a loud scraping of metal on stone.

Immediately her tail seeks out the object to steady it.

She picks it up. A shield. Smaller than Adora’s, but of the same craftsmanship. There’s a bullet hole in it. “Is this hers?” Catra asks.

“Yeah.”

“And that was what killed her.”

Adora nods.

Catra frowns. Then she puts the shield on her back, where it latches to the magnetic clamp under her coat, though the leather.

Adora lifts the body from its resting place. She lays Cometa’s remains gingerly down on the floor outside. Then they re-place the lid, and the stone slab.

“Call us a portal, we’re not doing it here,” Adora says.

Catra dials, and the wormhole opens a few yards away.

They step through, into the cargo hold of the Swift Wind. Home free.

* * *

“At least allow me to take some measurements!” Entrapta says.

The air in the infirmary is _frigid_ and Entrapta is wearing a heavy coverall.

Adora looks at Catra. Neither of them are feeling the cold at all.

“She’s been dead for six months, what’s a few more minutes?”

Adora looks at Entrapta. “You have five. Nothing invasive, and treat her with respect.”

Entrapta nods. “I _do_ know how cadaver-ethics. Licensed physician, remember?”

Cometa’s remains are subjected to a full-body scan, and some vitals monitoring. All measures predictably show the same prognosis: dead. The burial shroud is discarded, and the corpse is nude underneath.

“Okay,” Adora says. “Time to see if this can be done.”

“You can do it,” Catra says, “I believe in you.”

Adora looks down. Cometa used to be taller than her; now, not so much. She puts a hand on Cometa’s chest, and one on her forehead — the brain and the heart are the most important, are they not? — and closes her eyes.

_I’m sorry I couldn’t save you back then. Please let this work._

Entrapta flips her shades down. Catra’s eyes darken with a veil of protective shadow.

The brightness increases further, and further, until Catra’s _teeth_ hurt, for some reason; she recalls Hordak’s bomb demonstration up in Snows. Entrapta’s only point of comparison is once when she looked at an arc welding without eye protection; except it fills the room.

There’s a gasp of air, and the beep of machinery springing to life.

And then they can see again.

“Vitals look nominal,” Entrapta notes.

“Holy shit, look at her,” Catra says. “What did you do?”

Cometa’s flesh is… Brindled. Her dark brown sink tone is still evident, but interspersed in streaks is pure albino white. Her hair has changed from brilliant deep red to streaked ‘salt-and-paprika’.

The ventilation begins working, as Entrapta immediately dials the thermostat up to something that won’t give the patient hypothermia. “Step aside, I need to examine her.”

They do.

* * *

It drags on. Adora goes to sit out in the hallway, and Catra fetches some celebratory coffee.

“So, that was a whole thing,” Catra muses, handing the cup to Adora, before taking a seat. “And it’s barely past ten.”

Adora nods. “It was. Good work out there. You were incredible.”

“Says the one who just brought a corpse back to life. How does it feel to have command over life and death? That’s some religious nonsense right there, if I say so myself.”

Adora snickers. “Hey, I just do what’s right.”

Entrapta emerges into the hallway, unzipping her coverall, rolling it down to her waist.

“So, there’s good news and bad news.”

“Good first,” Catra says.

“The procedure was successful. The patient has been resuscitated, and is both stable and in robust health.”

“What’s the bad news then?” Adora ask.

“She has zero higher brain activity. I’ve ruled out brain death; for now my diagnosis is idiopathic vegetative state; prognosis, permanent.”

Adora slides down the wall. “Fuck… So close yet so far, I guess.”

“Why did it work with me?” Catra asks.

Adora shakes her head. “Maybe because you’d only been dead for hours or something.”

“What I witnessed,” Entrapta says, “was that it was a lot more… Gradual. And your light was different, dimmed. Wispy. Not the powerful radiance you used in there.”

“How did you feel, then?” Catra asks.

“How do you think?” Adora says. “I just watched my best friend shoot herself. I was fucking devastated.”

Catra nods. Then she gets up, and heads into the infirmary.

“What are you going to do?” Adora asks, getting up.

“Let me try something,” Catra says.

She puts a hand on Cometa’s forehead, and one on her chest, like Adora did, but from the other side of the bed.

She closes her eyes, and plunges into the place in her mind where the darkness springs from; horrifying and yet by now starting become familiar and even comforting. From her hands, pure black flows like ink onto and _into_ Cometa.

The darkness saturates the body on the examination bed, and starts flaking off, evaporating in wispy tendrils.

The light in the infirmary dims, until it looks like the power has gone out.

  
_Cometa of Candila, wielder of the Flame Core, friend of She-Ra. You fell by my hand, and for that I am contrite. By my power now return to us._   


The voice echoes in Entrapta and Adora’s heads.

A shrill scream pierces the deafening silence, and the darkness recedes in an instant, bathing the infirmary in regular illumination once more.

Cometa jerks up, screaming, looses her balance and falls off the examination table, knocking a rolling stand aside in the process. She scrabbles to her feet, and backs frantically away from Catra. “ _Get away from me!_ ”

She falls on her rear, and looks around the room frantically. She reaches her hand out towards a tool stand, and a scalpel flies into her hand, which she promptly points at Catra.

Catra holds both hands up.

The scalpel flies out of Cometa’s hand, directly at Catra, who draws Bane and parries it.

“Cometa!” Adora says, stepping inside.

Cometa looks behind her, at Adora. “She-Ra?!”

* * *

“You. You’re the one who _killed_ me,” Cometa says, accusingly.

She’s sitting on the table, wrapped in a blanket for warmth and modesty, with a glass of water.

“Yeah,” Catra says.

“ _Why,_ Adora? _Explain!_ ”

Adora pulls up a backless hover chair. She sits. “Listen, Cometa, I can imagine that this is confusing. But you’ve been dead for… Seven months now.”

“What do you remember?” Entrapta asks, “of being dead?”

Cometa looks at Entrapta. “I remember losing consciousness in a trench dugout, being colder than I ever thought I could be. And then… Pure terror, and then I was here. Don’t I know you?”

“Fascinating. And yes, I’m Princess Entrapta of Dryl, First Lady of the Hordelands, we were both at the gala in Snows although I don’t think we greeted each other formally.”

Cometa looks back at Adora. “Adora, why the fuck are there _two_ members of the Horde in here?”

Adora shakes her head. “The Horde doesn’t exist anymore.”

“Okay… So we won?”

“Not exactly,” Adora says. “Look, it’s complicated.”

“Then start from the top. Seven months; where are we?” Cometa asks.

“Aboard the Swift Wind, my spacecraft,” Adora says. “I’m the Captain, Catra is my intelligence officer, and Entrapta is the engineer and infirmarist. We’re the Starlight Brigade; at least part of it.”

Catra clears her throat. “Maybe we should do something else? Like drop her off with her sister and brother-in-law, and let them answer her first million questions?”

“Peftasteri and Asterion are here?” Cometa asks.

“Down in the underground city, yeah,” Adora says. “That’s not a bad plan. Are you okay with that, Cometa?”

“I guess, if you can get me some clothes first… What’s wrong with my skin?”

“Ah, that’s likely a side-effect of She-Ra’s healing magic,” Entrapta notes.

Cometa hops off the table. “Mirror?”

Entrapta points to a full-length mirror at the end of the room. Cometa walks over to it. “Urgh,” she grunts. Her irises are mismatched too; one of them brown, the other inexplicably now a pale grey.

“Uh,” Catra says. “So… I think I _might_ be able to do something about that, if you’ll refrain from throwing any more scalpels at me.”

Cometa turns to look at her, gauging the offer. “The hair is kind of cool, but I can do without the stripes.”

Catra walks over to her, and holds out a hand. Cometa takes it.

Darkness begins emanating from her hand, and Cometa stiffens, as it creeps up her arm. “Don’t worry,” Catra says. “It’s only scary because you think it should be.”

“I’m not scared,” Cometa protests.

“Liar.”

The darkness envelops Cometa once more, and then it fades. The striping is still there, but rather than the stark white against dark brown it is now an almost imperceptible color difference.

“Huh. I didn’t quite get the shade right, sorry,” Catra says. “Want me to try again?”

“No,” Cometa says quickly. She inspects her hand. “This is fine.”

* * *

Cometa gawks at the impossibility of Refuge II.

They head into the small yard, from the side street. Catra scans the house numbers. “Should be here,” she says.

She heads in, followed by Adora. Cometa follows both of them in a simple outfit of blouse, skirt, and sandals. They head up the stairs to an unassuming landing, with a single door.

Catra pushes Cometa ahead.

She knocks.

There’s a pause, and then the door opens, revealing Asterion, dressed in a colorful tunic and tight trousers, barefoot. A scent of incense emanates from the apartment.

“… Cometa?”

“Hello, brother,” she says.

Asterion looks over at Adora, and then to Catra. “Please, come in.”

They enter, through the entry hall, to the main living space. It is tastefully furnished, with red-brown drapes and an arrangement of potted plants. On the sofa sits Peftasteri, paler than her sister, with blond hair.

She’s staring into the air.

“Sister?” Cometa asks.

Peftasteri flinches and looks over. There’s no glimmer of recognition in her eye. She says nothing.

Cometa goes to her, taking Peftasteri’s hand in hers. “What happened to her?”

“A dark spell,” Asterion says. “Her connection to the Flame Core has been severed, and her mind has paid the toll. She is recovering, but slowly, the sorcerers say; she will never be the same.”

Cometa looks to She-Ra, at the verge of tears. “Please, help her.”

“I already tried,” Adora says. After Peekablue’s successful recovery, that was the very next thing she did. To no avail, except healing her somatic injuries.

Cometa looks then to Catra. “Maybe you could try, then?”

Catra looks at Adora, who nods.

Catra goes and kneels down in front of Peftasteri, looking into the stout woman’s brown eyes. She places her hand on Peftasteri’s forehead, and calls on the darkness.

All she needs to do is think about Adora, and plenty of it is at her disposal. She makes the psychic connection with ease, only to find the metaphorical equivalent of mostly paper.

“I’m not sure I can do anything,” Catra says.

“What did you do with Cometa?” Adora asks.

“There I had a personal connection to work from,” Catra says. “I’ve never met her.”

Cometa squeezes her sister’s hand. “Then use mine; get over here, brother,” she says.

Asterion strides over to Peftasteri’s other side, kneeling down, and taking his wife’s other hand in his. Cometa puts a hand on Catra’s shoulder, and Asterion mirrors her.

  
_Peftasteri, by my power, return to your faculties._   


Catra lets go, and stands back.

Peftasteri blinks a few times, then she looks to her side. “C— C— Ch—” she stammers.

“Hey big sis,” Cometa says.

Weakly, Peftasteri turns her head, to her husband. “A— S—” she mutters.

“Well, _that_ didn’t work,” Catra grumbles.

Adora puts a hand on her shoulder, tugging gently on her for them to leave. “It did; at least a bit,” she says.

The scene of Peftasteri struggling to say a single word, but _so_ so lucid compared to what she was moments prior; of Asterion and Cometa almost moved to tears, is a very private one.

“Thank you, She-Ra, Catra,” Asterion rumbles after them. “For bringing my sister-in-law back to me; and for helping my wife.”

* * *

They head back to the main street, perhaps a bit aimlessly. Catra thinks. Adora just walks along, with a spring in her step.

“What are you so chipper for?” Catra asks.

“You. You did good today; getting us in and out unseen, and you’ve undone one of the evils you caused.”

“Yeah, great,” Catra says deadpan, hiding her blush.

“Hey, a woman is alive and kicking right now, because of _you,_ Catra.”

“She was dead because of me too.”

They walk along in silence for a while, coming up to the main street. Traffic is picking up, with the people of Refuge II coming together to solve the logistical issues that come with packing six thousand people into a dome barely a mile across. Thank the stars the ventilation systems in place are up to the task, or they would all be suffocating.

“Penny for your thoughts,” Adora says.

“Hm,” Catra says.

“I’ll just keep it for buying candy, then.”

“Are you going to get me to help you bring back everyone I killed?” Catra says.

“No. I think that would be logistically infeasible,” Adora says. “What’s your body count?”

“I don’t know, high hundreds.”

“Yeah, see? And anyway, Cometa is a strategic asset to the resistance; we need her to help take down her sister.”

“No other reason?”

Adora shrugs. “She’s a friend and I blamed myself for her death — well, and you. Which is why I’m glad you wanted to help.”

Catra nods. What she hasn’t told Adora is that when she brought Cometa back, she saw a vision of her death, in Adora’s arms.

_I’m cold, Adora… You know, I’ve had a crush on you since the Ball. Can you hold me? I don’t wanna— I don’t—_

Catra takes out her communicator. “You know what, you go on ahead and tell everyone, I just thought of something I need to do before the afternoon.”

“What happens in the afternoon?”

“I’m… I’m going to invite my— my mom out for a chat.”

Adora gives her double thumbs up. “Good on you.”

* * *

Catra scales a building, somewhere in the production district — the districts aren’t strictly one way or the other, but the largest fabrication facilities have been set up in this third, while the militia operate out of the other, and the last one just is; hence residential.

The ‘thing’ she needs to do, is prepare. Prepare her story, for Clawdia. Prepare herself.

She thinks, darkly, of those who are dead because of her. She remembers wielding a light machine gun with Jona in the trenches, clearing a dugout full of unsuspecting Brightmoon soldiers; pure carnage that was. At least twenty people dead as her first real taste of killing. Cometa could be counted there, that tall lanky redhead, who loves her sister.

All of those people had people who cared for them, had they not?

Then there was the battleship she sunk. At least three hundred souls lost there, in one fell swoop. Tung Lashor was especially memorable. And her rampage on the Velvet Glove, which killed heavens know how many — clones, but still.

But the way one becomes a mass murderer is by ordering others to do it. Together as a platoon in the Ash Corridor, they killed upwards of a hundred enemy soldiers, just to corner She-Ra. Adora.

There was the various assassinations she ordered as the Special Operations Forces director. The attack on Elberon cost the lives of virtually every man-at-arms in the city and the shoddy camp they were put in sure claimed a few percent of that entire city’s old and infirm.

Salineas was not even close to bloodless either.

But there’s even worse, after a fashion. Ordering your own men to die. In the trenches it was bad luck; at least Lonnie, Kyle, and Rogelio survived. In the North… Not so much.

And last, but not least… She threw the lever on the Portal, and five percent of the entire world’s people vanished into thin air.

Every sink from now on until the day she dies, will be stained for her having washed her hands in it.

Cometa might have been a friend, but that incident claimed _Glimmer’s_ mom. Having just found her own, Catra appreciates the gravity of that face a lot more now than when she told her that aboard the Swift Wind, after Catra had nearly given her life in exchange for intel on Prime.

Idly, Catra wonders if that jar with her old left arm preserved in formaldehyde are still sitting on a shelf in Horde-occupied Brightmoon right now.

And then her line of thought goes back a few steps: Angella did die, but only _technically._ Entrapta said there was a good chance she was trapped outside of time, rather than bodily destroyed.

A plan begins to form in the back of Catra’s mind.

She takes out her communicator, and makes a call.

“ _Catra, to what do I owe the pleasure?_ ”

“Shadow Weaver, how good are you with sympathetic summoning spells?”


	3. Guilt, Survivor

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cw: injury, amputated body parts
> 
> A/N Jan 12th: Added a part to end of chapter 1 and forgot to post it with chapter 2; go re-read the end of _Blood, Darkness._

One of the chambers in the Crystal Castle’s underground complex happens to be just the size they need, and just distant and blast-proof enough that if things go catastrophically wrong, Refuge II won’t feel a thing.

Glimmer receives the call right as she is about to start thinking about lunch. She has spent the day familiarizing herself with what the Order of Mystacor has been up to regarding the safeguarding of the city, and the fight against Prime.

Her communicator chimes. Catra.

“ _Sparkles._ ”

For some reason, she doesn’t like video calls.

“Catra?”

“ _So, I don’t know if you’ve heard the good news, but Princess Cometa is alive. Again._ ”

Glimmer blinks. “Adora really pulled that off, huh?”

“ _Yeah. She did. Do you have… Maybe twenty minutes? I need some help; sorcery related._ ”

Glimmer closes the book, and hands it off to the junior sorcerer who is aiding her with the task in the military library.

Then with her free hand, she summons her staff.

“Turn on your video feed, I’ll come to you.”

Catra does, showing her face dimly lit, and Glimmer visualizes the space she can see behind her, and then blinks. It’s a ways, but these days she can blink from one side of Etheria to the other without even getting winded.

The room is poorly lit by work-lamps on the floor.

Catra turns to regard her. “Thanks for coming.”

Glimmer scans the room spotting the three other occupants: Rogelio and Entrapta working on assembling a modified portal device, looking like a hybrid between the infrastructure ones, and the first prototype that nearly destroyed the world. Shadow Weaver is drawing a large sorcery diagram around it.

“What’s this? Why is Shadow Weaver here?”

“I don’t like it any more than you, but she’s the only one I could think of with the expertise I needed.”

“And what am I, chopped liver?”

“You’re good, Sparkles, but she’s been at this for longer than you’ve been alive.”

Glimmer nods grudgingly.

Shadow Weaver finishes the diagram, and Entrapta and Rogelio finish the assembly, connecting the power cable.

“Your Majesty,” Shadow Weaver says, “please, take up your position in the diagram.”

“Catra, what _are_ we doing here?” Glimmer asks.

“I’m going to try to get Angella back,” Catra says.

Glimmer tenses.

There’s no question. She steps into the diagram. Catra takes up position opposite her in the circle, picking up a data cable and attaching it to Bad News on her wrist.

“Energizing,” Entrapta says.

Catra winces, then steels her expression, closing her eyes. She holds out her right arm, palm down. “Ready, Sparkles?” Catra says from the other side of the hulking piece of equipment.

“As can be.”

The portal machine hums, a deep ruble that rises in pitch. Energy-bleed causes arcs of plasma to form between the four tetrahedrally arranged containment pads.

Space begins to warp in between them.

  
_Angella, your daughter needs you._  


Catra flips her right hand over with great effort and a growling yell. A shifting wave propagates through reality. Blood runs out of her glove to her her fingertips, and droplets fall sideways into the portal.

In the center of the machine, the wormhole breaks through reality, opening to a void that is not even black. Looking at it, it feels like one’s eye forgets how to see.

Nothing.

Catra’s left arm becomes shrouded in darkness, and she takes a step forward, leaning back, unsteady against the pull of the portal. She nearly stumbles, and braces with a foot on the device itself, then realizes she can just stand on it, as if it has its own gravity, and steps up, putting each foot on a separate containment pad.

Standing at a thirty-degree angle to the floor, blood dripping into the portal, she gets down on both knees over the gap between the pads, steadies herself with her right hand on the third, straddling a vertex of the tetrahedral space contained within.

She reaches down into the nothing.

A scream of pain escapes her.

“Catra!” Glimmer yells. She’s feeling no pull at all; none of the others are.

“ _Stay put!_ ” Catra yells. “ _I almost have her!_ ”

And then Catra feels fingers brush against hers, and grasps, first unsteadily, fingers hooked together, then with a tug and a swift grab, she gets a wrist, and the hand grasps hers.

With a battle cry, Catra’s muscles flex and bulge against her tight clothing, growing grotesquely to match the demands of exertion.

And then a slender hand emerges, followed by a head of mauve hair hair, and a strong shoulder, bare.

Catra rises to her feet, grasping Angella by the elbow and pulling with heroic might. There’s the sound of fabric ripping. "Give. Me. The. Queen. You. Stupid. Fucking. Portal!

Angella stars moving, accelerating. “Rogelio! _Catch!_ ” Catra yells, and with an anticlimactic ‘pop’ Angella emerges from the portal; wings crumpled like an injured butterfly, her always prim gala uniform torn to tatters.

She sails into the air, tumbling unconsciously heels-over-head, and Rogelio manages to put himself between her and the hard floor, taking a knee to his face for his troubles.

“Yes!” Catra cries, triumphantly. Then the portal machine’s moorings creak. “Oh no.”

The pull of the portal suddenly increases. Catra falls to her knees, putting her hand back to the corner of the containment pad, and bracing hard. The steel brackets holding the four pads begin bending.

“ _Turn it off!_ ” Catra yells.

Entrapta puts an axe through the power cable — quicker than unscrewing it or running for the switch. The portal machine sputters, and the hum begins to wind down.

The portal swells in spite, and an arc of plasma re-energizes the containment pads.

Catra screams in pain, as the pull brings her down lying splayed against the pads; her tail gets pulled into the portal.

“We’ve got a self-sustaining portal anomaly!” Entrapta yells.

“Princess Glimmer!” Shadow Weaver yells. “Get Catra out of the diagram! Now!”

Glimmer blinks to Catra, unaffected by the pull, hooks an arm around Catra’s waist and blinks them well away from the crackling spatial anomaly.

In response, the portal swells once more and the containment pads are yanked directly off their brackets, swallowed by nothing. The wind starts picking up, sucked away to nowhere.

“This is _bad!_ ” Entrapta yells.

Shadow Weaver strides into the diagram, and her tunic flaps in the wind. With a yank, her mask strings snap and her mask falls into the portal, like nothing.

“Enough now,” she says. Then with her pinky finger, she draws a circle around her left eye, inlaying a circle of purple light in the skin, which draws within it a heptagram.

Then she holds out both hands, and with her palms describe two half-circles of a whole, drawing a Rune of near fractal complexity, in an entire rainbow of sinister colours.

She chants in a tongue that hurts the ears, with a cadence and melody that runs counter to all forms of music.

The portal shudders, and then it begins shrinking. First slowly, then faster, and faster, until it falls in on itself and vanishes like a soap bubble popping; a wisp of smoke; nothing.

“Don’t worry, it is over,” Shadow Weaver says, turning to the four others. “But that was too close; let’s never do that again, shall we?”

Catra props herself up on one elbow, despite the pain. Every joint in her body feels like it got dislocated and then adducted backwards. She looks at Shadow Weaver, who is digging a large neckerchief out of a pocket, and tying it across her face.

“Your eye,” Catra says.

One of her eyes is completely white; no iris.

“What of it?” Shadow Weaver says.

“What happened to it?”

“A necessary sacrifice, to enable myself to correctly cast the containment-and-reversal spell. Eyesight in exchange for momentary absolute clarity.”

Entrapta checks some readouts on a tablet screen. “Well, whatever you did,” she says, “You just saved Refuge, if not all of Etheria, from being sucked into a portal anomaly.”

“Yes, I did that, didn’t I?” Shadow Weaver says. Then she takes out her communicator, and summons a portal. “If you need me, I shall be in the bar on fifteenth, drinking myself into a well-earned stupor.” Then she steps through.

Glimmer turns to her mother, lying unconscious on the floor, and goes over to kneel beside her.

Entrapta is already examining Angella, fitting her with cranial electrodes. “Apart from the trauma to the wings, she appears unharmed.” She takes an EEG reading. “Normal brain activity; she’s just asleep.”

“What do you mean ‘normal’ brain activity?” Glimmer asks.

“When we brought Cometa back, she didn’t wake up at first,” Catra says, lying on the floor, on her back. “Sparkles, can you call Adora? I think I need some magical medical assistance.”

* * *

“ _No, no, you don’t need to worry about Glory. They usually sleep for a few days at a time,_ ” Starla says. “ _So, when are you planning this—_ ”

The communicator in Adora’s hand chimes.

“Oh, Starla, I have another call,” Adora says. “Can we continue this after?”

“ _Yeah, sure!_ ”

Adora terminates the call, and picks up the other.

* * *

Adora comes running through the portal. She takes in the poorly-lit chamber, and spots Catra there, lying in her back. “Catra!”

Catra raises a hand, weakly.

Adora runs to her, through an irrelevant sorcery diagram, past a pile of irrelevant scrap metal, right by an irrelevant Glimmer, Entrapta, Rogelio, and some other figure on the floor.

To Catra, lading on her knees, and sliding to her side.

“Are you hurt?”

“Hey, Adora,” Catra says, with a pained grin. She brings her tail up, missing about a third.

Adora puts a hand on the tail stump, and channels her light. From the glowing wound, flesh reconstitutes itself white-hot, and as the radiance recedes, an albino-white tail-tip reveals itself.

“White again,” Catra croaks. “Better fix that.”

The darkness of Catra’s fur begins crawling up, supplanting white for deep black once more.

Adora looks at it. “I don’t know, it looks kind of cute…”

The process stops.

“Really? White tail-tip?”

Adora nods.

“Okay. Guess… I’ll try it on. For size.”

“Now, tell me an amputated tail isn’t the reason you’re on the floor,” Adora says.

Catra winces. “Broken bones. Lots of them. Probably. Cant’ tell it apart from torn muscles and sprained joints anymore.”

Adora puts a gentle hand on Catra’s sternum, and with a building slow pulse of light mends bone, glues cartilage, knits muscle, and stitches tendons.

Catra gives a sigh of relief, closing her eyes. “Thanks, Ad.”

And only then does Adora look at the others. “Oh; Glimmer, Rogelio, Entrapta — is that _Angella?!_ ” She scrabbles to her feet, stumbling over, to kneel beside Angella on the floor. Glimmer has folded her jacket and put it under Angella’s head.

“She’s asleep,” Glimmer says. “Could you heal her wings before she wakes up?”

“I’ll heal whatever might be wrong with her,” Adora says, and puts a gentle hand on her forehead. A slow wave of gentle light runs through Angella’s body, and into her wings, straightening them out, but leaving white streaks in the ethereal feathers.

Glimmer casts a waking spell.

Angella’s eyes flutter open, and she beholds her most precious thing in the world. “Glimmer,” she says, quietly. A smile comes to her face.

“Mom,” Glimmer says, and tears well up in her eyes.

Angella reaches out and caresses her cheek, wiping away a tear. “It is good to see you.”

Adora turns to look over at Catra, only to find that she has vanished. Just then, Adora’s communicator chimes:

> _Sorry, gotta run. Late for that meeting with my own mom.  
>  — Cat_

* * *

Clawdia comes to the appointed place — a little cafe, just nearby hers and Leijon’s apartment. She spots Catra immediately, sitting by herself, off to the side, swirling a drink.

“Catra!” She says, and waves.

Catra looks up, looking a bit haggard. She waves back.

Clawdia takes the seat opposite her daughter. “Hey; I’ve cleared my schedule for today, just so you know — you don’t look so good?”

“Yeah, I just… I was just put through a bit of a wringer; just some Starlight Brigade business. She-Ra healed me up just fine.” Catra smiles.

Clawdia doesn’t. “What are you drinking?”

“Whiskey. Neat.”

“Catra, not to be your mother, although I am, but should you be drinking hard spirits for lunch?”

“Yeah. I— I have to tell you something.” Catra looks down in her drink. “And when I’m done telling you that, you… You might not like me anymore.”

Clawdia reaches over and puts a hand on Catra’s wrist. “Family doesn’t mean you have to like people, only that you _love_ them.”

“Yeah, well… Just know that if you don’t want me as your— as your daughter anymore after this; I understand.”

Clawdia sighs. “Should we get some food first?”

* * *

Catra recounts her tale, leaving out the good parts.

She boarded a tank headed to Thaymor, intent on getting Adora back, and killing whoever stood in her way in the process; and if a few rebel civilians ate it in the process, that was just cracking a few eggs to make an omelet.

She manipulated Shadow Weaver, who had at that point done virtually nothing, ever, to help Catra, into sponsoring what would become her ten-month-long vendetta against Adora.

The crew of the Amaranth, when she requisitioned their aid, were utterly expendable. Abducting Adora from the Salinean Royal yacht was probably the point where global conflict became a reality. She saved Captain Octavia from that rocket, only out of calculated personal gain. She toyed with Adora, risking the ship itself, and paid the price on her own body.

More manipulation got her a replacement spine. She started dating Scorpia, mostly just for the sex.

“So far it doesn’t seem so bad,” Clawdia says.

Catra shakes her head and continues.

She went to work directly for Hordak, and that gets a bit of a grimace from Clawdia, as the first thing. Entrapta sent her into the woods, and she followed Adora into the Crystal Castle, where she threw her down a shaft and stole some priceless tech.

“That was the first fabricator, actually. Every fabricator made ever since came from that single specimen.”

Thanks to her, they used the Black Garnet to undo the magic of the Whispering Woods allowing the army to burn a swath through it and start the war proper.

She went and threw Shadow Weaver in jail, but then let herself be manipulated by this person who had hurt her so, spoiling her victory. Because she was weak and stupid. As self-imposed penance she went to the front.

In the battle for the Ash Corridor, she brought twenty seven men, knowing well most of them would die and saying nothing; three of them left with her. She killed She-Ra, injected Adora with the serum, killed Princess Cometa; took advantage of the worsening situation to help the officer staff of the invasion escape, leaving the common ranks to fend for themselves, and securing a promotion in the process.

Going to the north, Entrapta was roped into a twenty hour surgery to fit Catra with a new arm and spine, and as thanks, Catra stole the virus crystal. Using it on She-Ra had the opposite of the intended effect, as it just made She-Ra deadlier and… Almost like she was sanitized.

This woman, who both was and wasn’t Adora, killed every soldier Catra threw at her, desperately trying to escape; and they only made it out alive because her own most loyal people put their foot down.

On the way home, she used a hand-held weapon to sink an enemy ship, obeying no rules of engagement, killing untold hundreds. Afterwards she slept _better._

Coming home, she was thrown in prison for endangering those she was sworn to protect, and maimed three fellow inmates because they annoyed her. Then she was broken out because she was ‘useful,’ getting undeserved special treatment once again.

In exile in the Crimson Wastes, she instated herself for a brief stint as the most brutal warlord ever seen in those parts. She threatened violence on the scumbags of the robber band she usurped, and pressured the powers that be into betraying Adora and her friends.

She was happy there, in retrospect, and might have stayed there, for the rest of the war, with Scorpia. Made a life. Instead she went back when she heard Shadow Weaver had gone to the other side. Weak.

“By then it wasn’t even Shadow Weaver anymore; it was just the _idea_ of her, that had power over me.”

Adora came with them as a willing prisoner, and Hordak used her to build the portal that nearly destroyed the world; to summon Horde Prime to Etheria. Entrapta learned that it would likely destroy the world if opened, but Catra in her blind obsession, even as they were under attack by Adora’s rescue party, disregarded her warnings — didn’t even let the very technician who designed the portal finish her sentence — before doing violence to her.

Scorpia took Entrapta to Beast Island, on Catra’s orders. It was a rational way to make the best of a bad call in the heat of the moment. That was what broke her lover — and friend; because in retrospect Scorpia had been nothing but the best to Catra, and Catra had taken and taken and taken from her, giving nothing.

Then, even as Adora was standing there on the rooftop, pleading with her not to do it, Catra opened the portal. Millions of people died, and the Queen of Brightmoon sacrificed herself to stop the world from ending.

Catra told Hordak his wife was a traitor, and his heart broke. He promoted her to director of the Special Operations Forces, and she used that power to overthrow him as commander in chief, instating herself there, letting him be merely the authority over the civilian sphere. An uneasy duumvirate.

From there she had thousands of loyal hands to do the atrocities for her. She destroyed the naval powers keeping the Horde navies in dock, and let a fleet of attack aircraft prey on merchant vessels; no doubt starving hundreds of thousands dependant on grain shipments.

She abducted an entire city, and left them to rot in a tent camp.

She overthrew Salineas, killing hundreds of leaders and thousands of soldiers — a surgical conquest but bloody none-the-less.

She handed the conquest of Snows off to Hordak, giving him the tools and methods he lacked, to enact a bloody takeover of a recalcitrant nation.

She tested her luck with a revolver — or perhaps she really tried to kill herself but couldn’t even get that right — and lost an eye.

She tried to blow up the Whispering Woods.

Then Hordak found out about her betrayal, and she nearly killed him too.

“And then I said to her: if this is happening because you are alive, why don’t you just kill yourself? And she grabbed Hordak’s gun, and put it to her head —” Catra mimes the firing of a gun to her temple “— click, misfire. Then the sky broke, and Horde Prime arrived.”

Clawdia has mostly been silent. Catra’s food sits cold, uneaten. Clawdia has only eaten half of hers.

“Everything horrible that ever happened in this war, has in some way shape or form, been my fault; done on purpose.”

Clawdia stands up, and Catra looks away, tears welling up in her eyes, so she closes them. And then there’s a warm hand on her cheek, that gently pushes her against Clawdia’s chest.

Catra cries. Openly, ugly, hating herself, who she was, and different from then, she doesn’t want to revel in it. She wants it gone. She wants her past erased.

But it never will be.

“Hush,” Clawdia says. “We’ve all done things we regret.”

“How can you just forgive me?” Catra asks quietly. “I’m a monster.”

“Because I’m your mom. And even if you are a monster, if you’ll have me, you can be _my_ monster daughter, and I’ll love you anyway.”

* * *

Catra gets sat down in the sofa, with a cup of strong, warm tea. Clawdia throws a blanket over her, and sits down next to her.

“You live here with Leijon,” Catra notes, eyes red from crying.

“Yeah.”

“Are you two together?”

“Goodness, no. She’s too old, a woman, and very much just a friend. I’ve never really dated; and it used to be I wasn’t sure I’d ever heal enough to let myself be loved. But now… Now that I’ve found you, maybe one day.”

Catra takes a sip of her tea.

“So, why don’t you tell me about the good parts?”

“What?”

“After Leijon took me in, my life got better, slowly. I made friends, I did honest work I enjoyed, I followed my passions, even got politically active. The good parts.”

Catra looks away.

“What about Adora? You grew up together, right? I’m sure there were happy times before you two became enemies?”

Catra smiles. “Used to be we thought we’d always be together. It was one of the happiest days in my life when Shadow Weaver adopted me, and I got to stay with her. She was a fucking ray of sunshine, through and through. We got into _so_ much trouble together.”

“See? Good parts!” Clawdia says. “And so what you spent ten months fighting each other. Now you’re friends again! How did that happen?”

Catra’s smile falters. “Hordak lived. So it was me, Spar— Queen Glimmer, and him. Then Horde Prime used his teleporter and accidentally picked us all up, and we ended up half a galaxy away.”

And then Catra recounts the brief tale of hers and Glimmer’s stay in Prime’s custody. How she considered joining up. How she decided against, and decided to sacrifice herself to save Adora. The one good thing, the last thing she would ever do. She manipulated Horde Prime like everyone else, because that’s the only thing she’s ever been good at, and then she made her last stand.

Prime pulled the rug out from under her.

“You… You were sanitized,” Clawdia says.

Catra nods. “It doesn’t feel any different, you just know in your heart that Horde Prime is right, and his cause is the only true and good thing in the world. You _have_ to work for him, there’s just nothing else you _can_ do.”

Clawdia puts an arm around her. “What happened then?”

“Prime used me as a hostage and that idiot Adora came back for me. She really thought she could pull a fast one on Prime — she didn’t even have She-Ra to rely on, it was just fragile human martyr-Adora, standing up to Prime himself. And Prime… He told me he’d let me have her if I could capture her.”

“Oh no.”

Catra nods. “I fought her. I hurt her; I knew I had to, but I didn’t want to. Then she got the upper hand by going for the wasp in my head, and Prime himself took control of my body to stop it from trying to burrow into my brain to get away. And then Adora tried to pull it out with forceps; she meant well, but she nearly killed me.”

Clawdia has nothing to say, and only horror to express.

“But it did let me take back control. Suddenly I could want something other than Prime. Adora, she… She promised she’d take me home, but I knew then that there was no way I could ever come home, so I killed myself.”

“Then how are you here, Catra?”

“She-Ra came back to Adora, and with her power, they got away from Prime. And Adora brought me back to life with She-Ra’s magic.”

And then Catra tells Clawdia about the good parts.

About how Adora forced her to face the fear of the people she had hurt, and how refreshing it was that Entrapta was angry with her.

About the Swift Wind. About how these people she had nearly killed several times over, just… Forgave her. And how she struggled with just accepting that she deserved kindness.

And Adora was just… There. Happy that they were back together. And she got to sleep in the foot end of Adora’s bed again, just like old times.

They couldn’t go home, so they went to Krytis.

* * *

“Okay,” Catra says, to Leijon and Clawdia. “You wanna restore the Magicat nation, yeah?”

“Well, we used to, yeah,” Leijon says. “I mean, I only learned about it in prison, but I do believe in the cause.”

“The Magicat kingdom isn’t our home. We’re not even from Etheria originally. Us fell — us Magicats, we have a home planet out there in the universe, and the First-Ones, basically turned us into a race without a homeworld. Krytis.”

“You’re kidding,” Leijon says.

“Not even a little,” Catra says. “It’s… Not really habitable right now, but I think with some stolen First-Ones terraforming equipment, it could be. Soon.”

Leijon and Clawdia share a look.

“And not only that…” Catra says. “I have something to tell. When we went there, we met an entity. Melog; a.. A great magical beast, you could call them. And they live in me, now.”

“Catra, I don’t understand,” Clawdia says.

“You know She-Ra?”

She nods.

“She-Ra is the defender of Etheria; but it’s a title that passes from one to the next. When one She-Ra dies, another is chosen. Melog is like that too, and _I’m it._ ”

With a shimmer of darkness over her, she grows her arms into great trunks of muscle and bone, with great clawed paws for rending prey.

“I’m… Well, there’s nothing on Krytis to defend, but that is Horde Prime’s fault, and I’m going to kill him, so I guess that makes me the avenger of Krytis.”

She shifts back to her regular appearance.

“I don’t know what to say,” Clawdia says, “but… It seems like you’re happy with it?”

Catra shrugs. “It sounds stupid, but for the first time it feels like I’m not running to catch up to Adora.”

“I hear the two of you have been bringing the dead back, left and right,” Leijon says. “The Seer Peekablue yesterday, that Candilan Princess, and now the former Queen of Brightmoon, both _today._ ”

“Yeah, it feels… Good. I’m undoing some of the bad I did back then.”

Clawdia pulls her into a hug. “I’m proud of you.”

The sudden gesture of love is enough to overwhelm Catra, and she begins crying, hugging Clawdia back.

“Goodness, girl,” Leijon says. “It looks like you’ve been starved for parental affection your whole life.”

Catra nods.

“What did that Shadow Weaver do to you?” Clawdia asks. “Didn’t she adopt you?”

“Well, I can tell you what she _didn’t._ ” Catra says. “She never let me starve, and she never loved me.” Catra smiles, sardonically, “sometimes when Adora got in trouble, she’d take it out on me, because Adora; she’s just the kind of idiot who takes a beating and asks for seconds. Pain and paralysis spells, that’s what she used most. They don’t leave scars or even injuries, just fear.”

“How long did that go on?” Clawdia asks.

Catra shrugs. “Seven years, or so. Until we went to the academy.”

“You said you ran away from the orphanage at five, why did you stay if she tortured you?”

“For Adora.”

Leijon laughs under her breath. “Oh, I see what’s going on here. Kid, you’re in love.”

Catra looks at Leijon. “Duh, do you think I’m that stupid?”

“And Adora?” Clawdia asks.

Catra shakes her head. “She doesn’t see me that way. And… That’s fine, really. I— I’m okay with that.”

* * *

Evening has fallen by the time Catra leaves Leijon’s place; sober this time.

There’s a serenity in her mind now, that she has never felt before.

A new kind of focus. Her mind turns to work. Today has been a day of successes, and there’s no reason to stop now. She calls a portal onto the Swift Wind.

“Hey Damara,” she says.

“Welcome home, Catra,” Damara says, materializing.

“Do you ever get bored of being bound to the ship?”

Damara smiles. “Adora has offered to revive me with She-Ra’s magic; and now that Princess Cometa has been brought back to life, it seems more credible that she’d be able to do it than ever but, no. I am perfectly content with being a spacecraft.”

“That’s not what I’m saying,” Catra says. “Remember how I changed _the entire ship_ with my powers? I’m not saying I know _what_ is going to happen, exactly, but I imagine we could figure something out that’ll let you do both.”

She walks past Damara, patting her on the shoulder. “Standing offer. Is Entrapta in?”

“Workshop.”

Catra heads through the Swift Wind with long strides, and ends up in the workshop, where Entrapta is sitting, in the twilit room, thinking.

“Am I interrupting something?” Catra asks.

Entrapta looks up. “I’m just thinking. I got my Runestone back; there’s a lot to do with it.”

“Wanna put it to good use?” Catra asks. She digs the remains of the Aegis out of her pocket and tosses it to Entrapta. “This is what’s left of She-Ra’s weapon; I’m curious what has happened to it. Maybe we can get it back in working order without the whole ‘designed to mind-control She-Ra’ part.”

“Fascinating; I’ll get right on that.”

“Don’t stay up all night,” Catra chides her.

“Damara doesn’t let me, don’t worry.”

* * *

It’s easy enough to sneak into the Brightmoon Palace, same as in Candila. It’s perhaps even easier, since it is visible from far away, so all Catra has to do is port there with Bad News. Glimmer could get her there, but Catra doesn’t want to interrupt her mother-daughter time.

The corridors are all befittingly elaborate of the royal palace, and decorated at regular intervals with Horde Prime’s white-and-green standards.

To find Glimmer’s room, she uses an unconventional method: whenever she gets to a junction or door, she flips a coin. Heads for yes, tails for no.

It takes her mere minutes to get to the right set of double doors, and port inside.

The suite beyond the doors lies unoccupied, with white sheets draped over the furniture.

And in the back closet, she finds a collection that puts her own little cabinet of horrors to shame. She threw out that childish venture when she was promoted to Major, but clearly Glimmer never had such aspirations of maturity.

Jar after jar of dead things, animal, fungus, and plant alike; insect, bird and mammal. All preserved in yellowing embalming fluid.

And there on the second self, at eye-level, center view, is a tall jar with a furred forearm, middle finger extended.

“Holy shit, Sparkles,” Catra mutters under her breath, and grabs the jar from the shelf.

Carefully, she opens it, and fishes out the macabre trophy, wrapping it in a towel and dumping it in her spacious coat pocket.

Then she puts the jar back, and calls a portal.

* * *

The simple fact is that she needs to be stronger. The portal nearly getting her was a wake-up call, and Catra has the distinct impression that Adora would never have such a problem.

The solution is obvious, because she has employed it before: enhancements.

There’s a lot of pros and cons to weight up in that decision, including but not limited to time investment. Getting enhanced is time-consuming, and requires the help of experts. And she would have to choose a Mystacorian suite of enhancements, probably.

The Mark Four enhancements she used to have nearly killed her. That much is true, but then on the other hand they were _hers_ in a deep sense. A facet of her identity, for better or worse. Losing them to She-Ra’s healing was at once a relief and a source of regret.

This time she isn’t getting enhanced out of desperation, or a desire for personal power. This time she does it knowing that it once cost her, and now knowing that it won’t. Not with Melog’s power.

She channels darkness into the lifeless limb on the tray before her, and it shivers; flexing its fingers. Darkness saturates it, and on its own accord, it rises into the air, before vanishing from all sight.

Catra feels it; invisible, intangible, and yet, a hand. She reaches out for the glass of water on the table, lifting it with the same ease as she would with the one attached to her shoulder. She reaches across the room and pushes the bathroom door open.

There’s a lot you can do with just one hand.

With it, she picks up the tattoo gun, and fills the ink vial with liquid darkness.

Mark Four was her suite of enhancements, and she memorized the manual, just in case she ever had to re-do them herself.

Then she realizes her fur is in the way.

* * *

Double Trouble extricates themselves from Peekablue, who has fallen asleep on their arm, using just a bit of shapeshifting. He sighs and rolls over, casting about the bed with his hand in his sleep, trying to find Double Trouble; eventually settling for rolling back and hugging Sweet Bee, sleeping on the other side of him.

They head out of the small bedroom, to the living room in the small apartment, and goes to answer the door, turning themselves decent.

Catra is standing there.

“Kitten, what can I do for you at this godless hour?”

“Double Trouble, I was looking for you. Can you give me a few pointers on shapeshifting?”

Double Trouble grins. “Sounds urgent; or maybe you’re just more of an insomniac than I remember. Sure.”


	4. Manumission, Part 1

Adora steps out of the landing pylon onto the hard ground before the colonnade ruins below Dagon Rock. It’s a beautiful morning, and there’s important things to do today. It’s dawn. Barely. The air is cool and fresh.

So naturally she starts the day with some rock climbing.

With superhuman strength and occasionally using her levitating shield as a support platform, she quickly scales the fifty fathoms of Dagon Rock, hoisting herself onto the flat pinnacle, and surveying the forest.

Prime’s spires dots the horizon and the forested mountain sides in the distance. There’s a misdirection spell laid over the whole of Dagon Rock.

Perfuma is sitting there, cross legged, meditating, facing the sun. Her gigantic dragon-like plant monster is hanging on the sun-side, its mouth open like a flower, facing the nourishing rays of the sun.

“Hello, She-Ra,” Perfuma says without looking.

“Hey there, Perfuma.”

“To what do I owe the honor?”

“It’s a beautiful sunrise,” Adora says.

Perfuma turns. “Is there any reason in particular that you disturb my morning meditation?”

“Yeah; I heard from the others that you normally sit up here until almost noon, without your communicator. I just wanted to give you a heads-up in person that we’re having a security council meeting at ten, today.”

“Okay. See you there.”

Adora reaches out and grabs a cloth bag hanging on the hilt of Parabell. “Also, I got you some breakfast.”

Perfuma stands and takes it, looking inside. There’s a metal bottle of water, so cold condensation is forming on it despite the canvas. Next to it is a selection of fruit of several different kinds.

“It’s from the Swift Wind’s fabricator — which means all of it was grown over a thousand years ago. The seeds inside should be viable. I know you’re into botany, so…”

Perfuma smiles. “That is… Actually a very thoughtful gift. Thank you.”

Adora heads down the rock, and Perfuma picks out an oval-shaped fruit with tough skin. Her power feels the large pit inside. With a knife, she cuts into it gently, without marring the pit, and separates it into two halves revealing green insides. She scoops out the delicate flesh with her fingers, fatty and just a note of savory. Unusual. This will make a fine addition to her garden, if one day this war is over.

She foregoes the rest of her meditation and lets herself be carried to the ground, and heads inside while the flower dragon crawls back up to its perch on the sun-side.

* * *

“Mom, do you know where Catra is?” Adora asks aloud. “She wasn’t there this morning.”

“ _Infirmary; uninjured,_ ” Damara answers with appearing. “ _She has foregone sleep._ ”

Adora heads to the mess for something to bring along, and then to the infirmary with two cups.

There, she finds Catra, inspecting her hairless right arm full of intricate tattoos. She’s only wearing her backless top and shorts.

“What are you doing?” Adora asks.

Catra puts the tattoo gun down and grabs a gauze pad to wipe away blood and excess ink. The ink on the gauze fizzles away into black smoke. “Restoring my enhancements; the once I used to have.”

“Didn’t… Didn’t they almost kill you?”

“That was before I was Melog.” Brown fur springs forth, covering her right arm. She holds both arms out to compare.

“How did you do the ones on your left?”

“Turned myself ambidextrous. Double Trouble taught me how, last night.”

“And your back?”

“Remember when Glimmer cut off my hand?” The tattoo gun rises off the table held by unseen force. The unseen force then becomes seen, as a layer of darkness covers it, revealing a disembodied hand and forearm. “I call it _Backhand._ ”

Adora whistles, impressed.

Catra looks up. “Wait, what time is it?”

“Dawn.” Adora hands her a cup.

Catra stands. Darkness flows over her, re-fitting her thigh-high leg warmers, rash-guard sleeves, and the belt askew on her hips. Bad News on her wrist, and Bane on the small of her back. “Cool, right? Another thing Double Trouble taught me; I call it _Bag of Tricks._ It’s how they shapeshift outfits.”

“Sounds like you found yourself a good mentor,” Adora says, with a smile. “Good for you.”

Catra takes the cup and takes a sip then almost spits. “I expected _coffe,_ what _is_ this?”

“Herbal tea. _You_ are going to bed. There’s a strategy meeting with the security council at ten; you’ve got time for a two hour nap. _Then_ you can have coffee.”

Catra groans. “There isn’t any way I’m going to talk you out of this, is there?”

Adora shakes her head, smiling smugly.

“You are insufferable when you have the moral high ground, you know that?”

* * *

The security council comes together once more, in the small auditorium, with three new additions.

“Welcome, welcome,” Lonnie says, her voice amplified by the microphone on her shirt. “Thank you all for coming so soon after the last meeting.” She flips through her talking points. “As many of you have already heard or witnessed, we have among us three new people. Our Seer, Prince Peekablue is back on our side.”

There’s a round of robust applause.

Peekablue stands, from between Double Trouble and Sweet bee, wearing a tailored pin-stripe suit. “Thank you. For the perilous situation I put the resistance in with my actions, I would like to formally apologize. I am to blame for the loss of several of our members to Prime’s ranks; and I don’t expect forgiveness for that. I acted within the fullness of my sanity and faculties. And now, there is not even salvation, for with my return comes not the full extent of my previous capabilities, since I now unwillingly share my Runestone. That is all. Please, no applause.”

“Candidly said,” Lonnie remarks. “Thank you, Prince. Next, we have Princess Cometa of Candila, who has been dead since the battle of the Ash Corridor back in winter.”

There’s another round of sparse applause; Asterion is perhaps the most enthusiastic, and whistles loudly.

Cometa rises; she is dressed plainly, in colorful style. “Thank you, Captain,” she says addressing Lonnie by rank. “I’m just happy to be alive, thanks to the combined magic of She-Ra and Melog. I know my sister Meteora poses a massive threat to the resistance, and I am happy to report that even by _existing_ I am depriving her of a significant amount of power. I fully intend to wield my share of our birthright Runestone to counter hers.”

This begets a _much_ larger round of applause.

“Good to have you back, Princess; I am ashamed to say I took part in the raid that resulted in your demise, and I am equally as happy that you don’t bear a grudge.”

Lonnie flips another card. “And then, we have Queen Angella of Brightmoon, the pre-eminent strategist and politician who spear-headed the Alliance and who has the longest track record of fighting the Horde, terrestrial or otherwise.”

There’s solid applause from every former member of the Alliance.

Angella is seated next to Glimmer, which poses a challenge of wing arrangement. She is dressed more modestly in a utilitarian military outfit. “Thank you, Captain Lonnie. A very faltering introduction. I must admit I am perhaps less deserving of it than the others. This conflict has escalated out of hand so very quickly, but I will do everything in my power to catch up to the present state of affairs, and attempt to be of service to the best of my abilities.”

Lonnie gestures for the applause to cease. “I will now give the speaking floor to Captain Adora of the Starlight Brigade.”

Adora rises from her seat, and walks to the front of the room with long strides.

“Hello again,” she says. “Two days ago, we were met with understandably lukewarm reception. I hope we have gained back some of your confidence. Even the dead are not fully lost to us anymore; although experience from yesterday has taught that the right circumstances must arise for that to be the case. I would like to present the next step in the plan to gain back our key remembers and deprive Prime of his most powerful weapons of terror: his Runestone wielders and captured arch mages.”

She looks around the room gauging reactions. Disdain has given way to curiosity, perhaps even hope.

Asterion indicates a question.

“Yes?” Adora asks.

“What’s the plan?”

“The details of the plans will be made known only to participants.”

And with that, Adora cedes the lectern to Lonnie once more. “All right, in other news, I have a proposal from First Lady Entrapta, who suggests three new sites for potential evacuation in case Refuge II is breached, which she has identified using her Runestone ability…”

* * *

Still present in the auditorium are of course the Starlight Brigade and Starla, Peekablue, Double Trouble, Netossa, Perfuma, Frosta, Cometa, Sea Hawk, and Lonnie.

“So,” Bow says, “Adora, don’t keep us in suspense.”

“We’re going to do a reprisal of operation Clear Skies. Remember that one?”

There’s an exchange of looks.

“The one where we shot down Horde propeller aircraft using the Swift Wind’s point defense system?” Bow asks. “The Swift Wind doesn’t have combat capability to fight off Horde battle spacecraft.”

“The Swift Wind will not be involved. Operation Clear Skies will be conducted by myself, flying solo with Glory — that’s Starla’s giant space owl.”

“You and what fifteen-inch gun?” Frosta asks.

Adora smiles. “As it happens I have a track record of taking down Horde interceptor craft with thrown javelins.”

“I understand your spacecraft has stealth capability,” Lonnie says, “but does Glory? You’ll need to take off from off-base, to not alert Prime.”

“Don’t worry,” Adora says, “I’ll be sure to clear takeoff and landing with you to avoid casting suspicions. Clear Skies will ultimately be a distraction, no matter how much carnage I manage to create.”

There’s a round of nods.

“The real operation will be a reprisal of our rescue missions on the Velvet Glove. According to intel from Peekablue, Prime has everyone of our targets on board his flagship, save for Meteora and Huntara. Participation will be _strictly_ voluntary; this is an extremely dangerous mission,” Adora says, “and _I_ will _not_ be running point. Catra will.”

All eyes turn to Catra. “Thanks for springing that on me, Ad.”

“That’s what you get for sleeping in, Cat.”

And so they go around the room.

Perfuma, Frosta, Cometa, Sea Hawk, Lonnie, Sweet Bee, Peekablue, Double Trouble, and Starla are out; all for sensible reasons.

Netossa, Glimmer, Bow, Entrapta, Wrodak, and Catra are in.

* * *

Cometa lingers as the meeting ends, looking down at the floor where Lonnie is discussing with She-Ra and Sea Hawk, some logistical details.

“Hey.”

She turns, startled, to see Catra, looming a few inches taller than her, yet somehow hiding in the shadows.

“Oh. You. What do you want?”

“I don’t think I ever formally apologized for, you know, shooting you. So: sorry. It was war, but…”

Cometa just nods.

“I have something of yours.” Catra produces from behind her back — somehow — Cometa’s shield. The one with the bullet hole in it.

Cometa looks at it. “You break it you buy it.”

“What?”

She points to the bullet hole.

“You’re saying you don’t want it?”

“I’m saying you can keep it.”

Catra flips the disc of metal and wood over in her hands. Then it disappears, somewhere.

Cometa goes back to looking down at the floor.

“Another thing,” Catra says. “I know you had a crush on She-Ra; when I brought… Your soul back, if you will, I heard your last words.”

“Hm. She was out of my league, even then; wasn’t she?”

“And dating Princess Glimmer at the time,” Catra adds.

Cometa shrugs. “I’m not going to get between you and her,” she says.

“We’re not—” Catra shakes her head. “Whatever.”

“That Captain Lonnie, she’s Horde, right?”

Catra takes a moment to process that, then chuckles. “Oh, no, you have a _type_ don’t you?”

“What?! No! She’s just… Confident, and clever.”

“You like stoic, gifted lady officers. I should have known. Anyway, sorry to tell you this, Lonnie is basically married to her boys. Has been since boot camp.”

“Oh.”

“But… I mean, if you like heroic space girls with magic weapons…” Catra not-so-subtly points to where Starla is sitting, boots up, idly chatting with Frosta, who seems really jazzed that the heroic space woman with the magic weapon, wants to talk to a teenager.

“Really,” Cometa says deadpan. “You’re playing matchmaker?”

“What, are you scared? You already died; nothing’s really going to top that, is it? Start with some… I don’t know, hair care tips, or the fact that you made She-Ra’s shield. And you’re both new in town.”

* * *

Glimmer and Bow head to the residential district — which is to say, Glimmer takes his hand, and blinks them to the address.

Adjusting to life in Refuge II is going to take some time for Angella, but despite the offer of a room aboard the Swift Wind, she insists. If this is the lot her people is dealt, she will live it with them. Even if that means having to do household chores.

The apartment they found for her, after Entrapta and a team of former Brightmoon physicians cleared her health, is newly constructed, an extra unit stacked on top of an extant set of two.

Angella opens the door. “Glimmer, Bow, welcome, do come in.”

“Your Majesty,” Bow says.

They enter, and leave their boots by the door. The furnishings are the ‘factory standard’ outfit for the single-occupant modular apartment spaces. A sofa-bed, a dining table with monobloc chairs; a kitchenette, a single bathroom.

“I must apologize for yesterday,” Angella says. “To think I spent my first day back in the land of the living asleep.” She sets over water to boil on the single hotplate.

“Mom, please,” Glimmer says. “I’m just glad to have you back.”

She and Bow take the sofa.

“Dire circumstances, though,” Angella says. “I— I’m at once elated to know Micah is alive and then…”

“Yeah,” Glimmer says. “We’ll get him back. We have a plan.”

Angella sets a tray with cups, and pours water on the teapot. “I wish I could be of some use, but; I was a middling sorceress compared to your father, and a shoddy Runestone Wielder compared to you. Statecraft was my true forte, and there’s not a lot of state left to craft, with us in exile.”

“That’s… My fault, really,” Glimmer says, looking downcast. “Mom, I’m sorry, I fucked it all up. I lost the war, and took advice from the worst possible people; I caused the chain of events that let Etheria fall into Horde Prime’s clutches. I didn’t even do the succession ritual right.”

Bow rubs her shoulders.

Angella sits across from them and sets the tray on the sofa table. “Glimmer, I have presided as queen for over two hundred years, comparing your two months of rulership to mine is like comparing a fresh willow sapling to the bicentennial Whisper Oak. Brightmoon still stands; occupied, not razed. You’re still fighting. That’s enough to do a mother proud.”

Glimmer wipes her eye. “Really?”

“Now, I want to hear what you two are up to,” Angella says, looking to Bow.

“Your Majesty?” he asks.

Angella picks up her teacup, and leans back, looking directly at her daughter. “I’m not stupid, Glimmer,” she says with a wry smile. “I know the look of young love.”

Glimmer chuckles, and looks at Bow. “Yeah. We’re not hiding it.”

“No reason to,” Bow adds.

“I take it Adora and you are still friends?”

“Well, that’s actually a bit of a story,” Bow says, “it was kind of a near thing… The coronation went _really_ well, apart from the fact that Glimmer dropped the marble disc, and used a fire spell on the guardian.”

Glimmer hides her face in her hands. “Babe, _please,_ ” she says.

“All right, then _you_ tell it,” he says, elbowing her with a smile.

* * *

“You wanted to see me?” Catra asks, stepping onto the main fabrication floor. She holds up her communicator with a letter on display asking her to come ‘urgently.’

Entrapta and Damara are standing there, quietly conversing.

“Catra! Good! I’ve had a breakthrough with She-Ra’s old weapon!”

She skates up to Catra on her exoskeletal legs, and holds out a grapefruit sized sphere of metal with the lustre of brushed brass.

Catra reaches out, and Entrapta pulls it away. “Ah sorry, I see, you misunderstood. This one is my replica of it. I managed to reverse engineer it, and provide the missing power source and intentionality control to it.”

She forms a hammer with it. “It’s a true omni-tool! However, it can’t conjure munitions like She-Ra could with the Aegis. I’m still working on that, but for my purposes this is more than plenty.”

“So, what of the one I gave you?” Catra asks.

Entrapta places the sphere against her belt buckle, and it flattens itself into a disc, staying there.

Then she takes out the little silver ball, and hands it to Catra. “It needs power, and intention. From what I can tell, She-Ra’s starlight provided its power, and the Runestone was the intentionality… Without it is… Dormant.”

Entrapta looks intently at Catra.

“What?”

“It’s just a theory, but; your usage of your darkness powers — they are very varied and not as overt and powerful-seeming as Adora’s starlight. I began forming the hypothesis when you revived Princess Cometa, and it was basically confirmed when you retrieved Angella. Try channelling Darkness into it; and claiming it as your own.”

Catra looks down at the sphere, and does just that.

  
_Awaken._   


The silver tarnishes into something like blued steel. _Pistol,_ Catra commands it.

It shimmers; then grows spikes, cutting her palm. Catra drops it, and it reverts to a sphere. “Ow, what the—”

The little ball of dark metal rolls across the floor and bumps into her foot; she moves it, but it persists, bumping against her toes.

“Try picking it up again,” Damara suggest.

As Catra bends down to scoop it up, the metal unfolds itself into a quadrupedal shape and leaps into her palm, squirming.

Catra stands, examining it, as a familiar shape appears. A four inch tall Melog stands there, in her palm, cast from blued steel.

“Melog?” Catra asks.

The little creature shakes its head. Then it morphs into a diadem, a small knife, and a revolver, in rapid succession before returning to Melog.

“That’s… The Aegis?” Damara asks.

A little disembodied hand with a thumb up.

“Okay, this is just super weird; what, you’re borrowing Melog’s form?” Catra asks.

Another thumb’s up. Then Melog. Then a sphere which vibrates.

“What do you want?” Entrapta asks.

In a swirl, it becomes a small humanoid figure, wearing a battle skirt, and carrying a large weapon. Adora’s features are easy to recognize even tiny and wrought in steel.

“She-Ra?” Catra suggest. “Of course —”

The little land is back, wagging a finger.

“This is fascinating,” Entrapta says.

Then it forms a little circle, surrounded by protruding lines.

Catra stares at it. “Starlight?”

A thumb’s up. Then it becomes a little walnut brain, which proceeds to ‘melt’ into a puddle, and again the starlight symbol. Then a little stick figure, which proceeds to fall over in a little pantomime of death.

“Starlight, death?” Catra says.

A thumb up.

“Starlight will kill you.”

A thumb up.

“That’s _terrible!_ ”

Wagging finger. Brain melting into knife.

“You _want_ to die? To just be a weapon?”

A thumb up.

“And starlight will do that.”

The hand goes to make a thumb up, but hesitates, then rubs its fingers together. It points at Catra, then makes the starlight symbol, but the star becomes eclipsed by a negative-space moon. Then the little figure falling over dead.

“I should try to kill you with darkness.”

Thumb up.

Catra takes a deep breath, then channels darkness into it again.

  
_Become a mere tool._   


The metal shimmers and forms into a ball. _Pistol,_ Catra commands, and this time it instantly forms itself into a hefty handgun.

Catra ejects the magazine and clears the chamber, finding the cartridges loaded with bullets made of solid darkness.

Catra looks at Entrapta and Damara who have both watching the conversation with interest.

“That was weird,” Catra notes. “But now at least it works.”

“You must have accidentally endowed it with unwanted sapience,” Damara muses. “All it wants to be is a tool.”

“I was wrong,” Entrapta says. “The Aegis must be rather a lot more complex than my omni-tool; my reverse-engineering is incomplete.”

Catra puts the shapeshifting ball of metal in her bag of tricks. She’ll think of a name for it later, something beginning with ‘B.’ Baleful Omen? Bullets? Butcher?

* * *

The Velvet Glove hangs in the control center, holographically.

“I’m just going to go ahead and say what we don’t want to hear. It’s infeasible to rescue all of them,” Catra says. “We don’t have the manpower to spare.”

Entrapta, Bow, Glimmer, Netossa, and Catra. Grabbing two is stretching it.

Peekablue is there, as well, even though he’s not coming; by Adora’s invitation. Adora is there too, but Catra has the floor.

“Well, dear Catra,” he says. “The choices are also limited. Neither Scorpia nor Mermista are on the Velvet Glove; which is worrying on its own. I’ll have to look into that.”

“So, it’s Spinnerella, King Micah, and Hordak,” Catra says. “Pick two.”

She looks at Netossa, then Glimmer, then Entrapta.

“Hold on,” Netossa says, “why Hordak of all people?”

“A promise is a promise,” Adora chimes up. “He doesn’t belong there anymore than the other two.”

“We’re getting Spinnerella and Hordak,” Glimmer says.

“Sparkles—” Catra begins.

“Spinnerella has a part of the Hyperlens’ power,” Glimmer says. “The informational advantage is too dangerous. We _have_ to get her. She’s powerful too; we’ll need at least two heavy hitters to subdue her. That means only one for my dad.”

“But he’s not even a Runestone Wielder,” Catra says. “Is he really that powerful?”

“Oh yeah,” Netossa says. “Probably the most powerful battle mage to ever walk Etheria, to begin with, and who knows what kind of dark magic Prime is making him work…” She looks over at Glimmer, who is pulling her knees up. Bow puts an arm around her.

“All right,” Catra says. “Sparkles, Flyboy, draw up a tracking spell for Spinnerella, you three are taking her out. Entrapta and I are going to get Hordak. Stealth is going to be the name of the game, same as last time; an this time Sparkles has actual books about misdirection spells, and we have _me._ ”

“And what is it you can do?” Netossa asks.

Catra turns herself completely black with darkness, then invisible. Then back again. “You know how She-Ra is all bright lights and in-your-face? I’m the _diametric_ opposite.”

Netossa nods. “Alright big girl, just curious. So, how does this work, we just fly up to Primes’ flagship?”

“Yeah,” Damara says. “Swift Wind is effectively completely invisible.”

“And I am going to be all bright lights and in-your-face,” Adora adds. “As a distraction.”

“So, let’s talk about the Velvet Glove,” Catra says. “I happen to have been allowed free roam of it at one point, complete with a map, and I was also inside Horde Prime’s _head_ for a spell so I know it pretty well.” She points to the hologram. “The eighth ring up top is where his throne room is; he likely isn’t keeping his prize assets far from that. Blue?”

“Nope, he isn’t,” Peekablue says. “And don’t ever call me ‘Blue’ ever again.”

“And Hordak he probably keeps even closer.”

“By his side,” Peekablue adds. “Hordak has the greatest knowledge of Etheria out of the lot of them; Prime milks him for info.”

“Are you up for that?” Catra asks Entrapta.

Entrapta nods grimly. “So long as you do all the killing.”

Catra claps her hands. “Now, here’s what we’ll be up against if it _does_ turn into a scrap…”

* * *

Bow is already taking them airborne as soon as the strategy meeting ends.

“Hey, She-Ra; Adora,” Netossa says, jogging after Adora down the corridor.

“Netossa, what’s up?”

“Sorry about the cold welcome two days ago; I— None of us are really in a good place.”

Adora nods. “Because Spinnerella is on the Velvet Glove? I happen to know pretty much _exactly_ how you feel.”

“Yeah. What’s with the new look; you’re just not changing back anymore?”

“It’s permanent. Means I don’t get anymore second chances if I get shot,” Adora says.

Netossa stops, Adora stops too. Netossa looks her up and down, whistling. “You’re somehow rocking it even better than before.”

Adora starts walking. “Wait till you see what I can do with my friend’s giant bird.”

As they reach the cargo hold, Catra is there with Starla. Glory is sitting there, awake, puffed up and looking _very_ well-rested.

“Hey Glory!” Adora calls out, jovially.

She gets a slow hoot in reply.

“Hey Adora,” Catra says.

“ _How did she—?_ ” Netossa ponders.

“Came to see me off?” Adora asks.

Catra nods. “I have something for you.”

From her bag of tricks, she conjures the little dark metal sphere. “I… I got it working.” In her hand it morphs into a knife. “But… I think you should have it.”

Adora takes the offered all-weapon. It does nothing. “How do I—”

“Just channel starlight into it; should attune it to you.”

The little metal sphere glows bright, then settles in a lustre not unlike polished rose gold. It turns into a bracelet.

“It suits you more than it does me,” Catra says.

Adora pulls Catra into a hug. “Stay safe out there,” she says.

Catra reciprocates. “You too, idiot. You’re the one fighting spaceships with sharp sticks.”

Then Adora heads over to Glory, and climbs Glory, who lays down to let her get into the saddle.

“You got it?” Starla asks.

Adora gives her a thumb up. “Just like you taught me.”

Starla pats Glory on the beak. “Take care of each other up there, Glory.”

The drop cutes open and Glory rises to its feet, then with a hop tumbles down into the sky. Then the drop chutes close again.

“ _All right everybody, bombs are away,_ ” Bow’s voice sounds over the intercoms, “ _we’ll be breaking atmo in a few minutes, and from there we’re on the clock before we break cloak from the heat. Hydrate, hit the head, suit up, and weapons check._ ”

Catra turns to Netossa, who is staring at her. “What?”

“That was some gift, you gave her,” Netossa says. “I could tell you didn’t want to part with it.”

Catra glares at her. “It used to be hers; only right she gets it back. Besides she already gave _me_ a weapon:” out of her bag of tricks, she fetches Bane. With a shimmer of illusion, Catra restores it to a facsimilie of Parabell, though far less splendid.

Netossa blinks. “You’re saying you _exchanged magical weapons?_ ”

“Yeah, why is that significant?”

“Oh, no reason,” Netossa says, “it’s not like it’s a culturally significant gesture of affection or anything.” Her hand goes to her purple choker.

Catra rolls her eyes. “Yeah, it’s what soldiers do. It is _not_ because I like her.”

“But you do; like her, that is” Netossa says.

“Everybody does,” Catra deflects.

* * *

Flying on Glory is a _lot_ different from piloting any kind of craft. Because when all comes to all, Glory is the one flying, and Adora is just the passenger.

They ascend through the skies, on wings blazing trails of plasma for thrust. As the atmosphere thins, the silky protection of Stella Nova envelops Adora in lieu of a spacesuit.

She was originally planning to wear a visor or a contact lens to assist her aim, but now she has something better. The gold bracelet. “You need a name,” Adora mutters to it. “I dub thee _Halcyon._ ”

Then she thinks at it, of exactly what she needs. An optic that will let her aim her javelins at intra-orbital distances. First, a mask forms in her hand, one shaped to fit perfectly within her forehead protector; then the front of it grows outwards forming an arrangement of bulky lenses, like a small actuated telescope strapped to her face.

Around her the sky becomes black, as the air thins.

Telescope lenses move in a silent choreography, and she begins spotting the swarm of interceptors, dropships, spires, and other Horde presence in Etherian orbits.

Adora calls on Stella Nova to protect them, and a veil of silk envelops Glory like it is carried on a shock-front between them and the darkness of space. Then she summons Parabell in force.

“Are you ready?” Adora asks.

Glory hoots. Their wings and tail are already angled, and a miles-long trail of starlight behind them. This is not a stealth mission.

Adora grabs an implement from the saddle, a six foot long carbon fibre ladle, of sorts, and holds it aloft.

The shaft of a twenty-cubit javelin lands in her hand, the butt of the shaft settling in the scoop of the ladle, and she takes aim at an interceptor hundreds of miles distant. Both feet in the stirrups and one hand on the pommel makes for slightly awkward throwing, but she has practiced that too.

With a heave, the javelin turns into a streak of light.

Leaving her thrower, the weapon accelerates to relativistic velocities, and ten seconds later it strikes home; hitting the engine and reactor. Total destruction.

She scouts the skies for new targets and counts hundreds of fusion engines turning on to gain intercept trajectories.

“Let’s do some hunting,” Adora says, and another javelin lands in her hand.


	5. Manumission, Part 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cw: battle violence, gore, injury, traumatic blindness

They drop off Starla by portal, and Bow takes them into orbit, against the rotation of Etheria. A few tense minutes pass in the control room, as the exterior pressure drops away and they wait to see if their in-atmo signature gets spotted.

Reaching orbit, Bow engages the portal engine, jaunting them halfway around the planet to their apoapsis, and burns the reactionless engines to circularize. Then another jaunt puts them in position to their trans-lunar injection, and a light show.

“Okay, you guys weren’t kidding,” Netossa says.

The explosions of fusion bottles getting perforated and blowing up — which doesn’t normally happen — are visible from the entire Etherian sphere of influence. Two per minute. Interceptor craft are jaunting in from every adjacent orbit, with little green flashes.

Zooming the telescope view shows the whole theatre.

“That’s a _lot_ of Horde ships, isn’t it?” Netossa asks. “Is she going to be okay?”

“I’m communicating with her,” Damara says. “She has it under control. For now.”

Bow jaunts them and the view disappears while the telescopes re-adjust to their new position.

“All right, we’re coming up on the Velvet Glove now,” Catra says.

The final approach burn begins, and Bow puts them on a jaunt-free intercepting trajectory. They aren’t going to risk jaunting any closer — one of the things they absolutely cannot hide, is their gravity; miniscule, but greatly amplified when by the portal engine’s operation. With delicate enough instrumentation, their cover will be blown instantly.

“All right everybody, time to suit up,” Catra says.

Bow gets out of his chair and as he passes Wrodak in the copilot’s seat, gives him a pat on the shoulder. “You got this?”

“Worry not, brother,” Wrodak answers confidently, “I have this _well_ in hand.” He gives a thumb up.

* * *

“Are you just not going to wear a suit?” Netossa asks Catra, who conspicuously _isn’t_ getting dressed; she’s not even arming up.

“I’ll put one on if I need one.”

“Pardon?”

A billowing shadow passes over Catra, and suddenly she’s wearing the dark red suit with the animated ears — or rather, a recreation of it nine sizes larger. Another wave of shadow takes it away again.

“Bullshit,” Netossa mutters, attaching the complex harness that keeps her alive during fancy tether-work — it goes under the hazard suit, but over the emergency compression-suit that’ll keep her alive in the event of suit pressure loss.

“At least she has the good sense not to flaunt it,” Glimmer says, wiggling into the armored legs of her own suit.

“Thanks, Sparkles,” Catra says. “You always see the best in people.”

Entrapta emerges from the changing booth, wearing a similar compression suit. Her hair is newly shaven, revealing the intricate enhancement tattoos on her scalp, as well as the cybernetics in her neck. Damara is there, physically, and helps her girlfriend into the monstrous exoskeleton suit — not that she needs a lot of help.

Dressed up and ready to go, they meet with Bow, exiting the men’s locker rooms in the hallway. He too is wearing exoskeleton — though only the legs; and a lighter model than what Entrapta favors.

“What are those?” Glimmer asks him.

“A bit of extra speed,” he says. “I’m competing with the two fastest Princesses on Etheria, am I not?”

“They suit you,” Glimmer says and gives a little flutter of her wings, bringing her up to his eye level for a kiss, before the visors come down.

* * *

The guns are stowed in the cargo hold, where they’ll be staging the incursion.

Glimmer brings just a pair of Zev pistols for backup — never being much of a shooter before being introduced to repeating firearms, and not much of one after learning magic.

Netossa has taken to imitating Adora’s old load-out, with dual ray gun pistols and a Yala-Zev, foregoing the Toha-Zev because of its bulk.

Entrapta is unarmed, barring off-label use for the entire workshop of tools she is carrying; and that’s excluding her new omnitool.

Catra is bringing an entire arsenal’s worth of variety in her bag of tricks.

But the unusual one is Bow. In his belt quiver rests seven golden arrows, separated from the regular carbon-dark shafts.

“Did Adora make you those?” Catra asks, upon noticing.

“Yeah. They return after loosing, and punch through body armor like it’s gambeson,” Bow says, inspecting his folding bow for misalignment with a practiced eye.

“ _Salutations!_ ” Wrodak’s voice sounds over the intercom. “ _I am now making our final approach to the Velvet Glove. Damara requests Catra help cloak the attachment of the landing gear._ ”

Catra conjures a portal to the control center and walks through.

“Please don’t do that,” Damara says at her arrival.

Out of the wall screens, Catra sees the Velvet Glove’s majestic bulk come ever closer. The reluctance to use artgrav really shows in the design: eight rotating rings large enough to hold small cities.

She heads to the center console at the forefront of the room, and puts her hand on it.

Wrodak carefully matches velocities with the eighth ring in an approach orbit, and they glide in gently, perfectly matching the speed of the rotating surface underneath.

Catra pushes her darkness into the Swift Wind.

  
_Quiet!_  


The landing legs extend and make contact with the Velvet Glove, clamping down magnetically. For ten tense seconds they wait with bated breath for any sign they’ve been detected.

“All good?” Catra asks.

“No chatter, no change in the escort void, no incoming portal engine signatures…” Damara says, reading from her little arrangement of orbiting purple holograms.

Catra opens another portal, back to the cargo hold. “ _Catra, no fivolous portalling—_ ” she hears Damara yell after her.

“We should be good,” Catra reports to the four others.

“I have a reading on Spinnerella,” Bow says looking at his visor — the tracking spell is in his pocket. “She’s in the throne room.”

“Suspiciously convenient,” Catra says. “Circle; I’m going to cloak us, then Sparkles takes us across.”

They form a circle of clasped hands. Catra’s power washes over them, rendering them invisible. Glimmer blinks them across the crushing void and onto the Velvet Glove. They arrive in a nondescript hallway, curving gently with the ring. A few hundred paces downspin is a group of armed and armored clones marching away from them. A patrol?

Letting go of each others’ hands doesn’t break the spell. Entrapta and bow both release a small reconnaissance drones.

To each other, they appear half-translucent, as if one eye sees empty space and the other sees the person. Catra directs them to move out with a hand signal, and they set out in a light jog upspin, until they reach the first intersection. Catra bag-of-tricks up a mirror on stick, and peeks both left and right. Right has a pair of technicians working a ways down the hall; left has…

An incoming patrol. Fifteen rifle-carrying clones come marching three-and-three. Catra urges them all to hug the grey wall.

Breathlessly they wait, as the clones pass by them, completely unawares.

Then Catra directs them to move again.

* * *

The throne room itself has been refurbished for the modest feast for three.

“She’s very powerful,” Micah remarks, idly swirling his wine, watching the space battle unfold diagrammatically on the screen behind Prime’s throne. His cropped pompadour is beginning to grey, his skin is pallid, and his irises are turning an unnatural red, to go with the fangs; side effects and negligible rebound from dark magics. He is dressed in standard combat armor.

“Indeed she is,” Prime says. “But no matter the destruction she works, within the hour my orbital presence will be renewed.”

Micah skewers another piece and chews on the tender meat. “But how are you going to deal with her?”

“Very carefully. She-Ra may be indomitable, or she may be susceptible to simple overwhelming force. Her compatriots are very much not.”

“A massacre will not be necessary, my lord,” Micah says. “Please. This war can be won with propaganda and military interventions still; I am convinced of it.”

Prime nods. He gestures, and a clone by his side steps forward to remove his plate of uneaten main course and serve instead the dessert. “What do you think, dear brother?”

The servant frowns. “I defer entirely to your judgment on the matter; but I know the Etherian peoples to be diverse and strong. It will take much terror to break them.”

“Indeed,” Prime says.

“My lord,” Spinnerella says, “my insight tells me She-Ra has settled into a stable rhythm of battle; perhaps we should wait and observe whether she slows over time, which would suggest fatigue?”

She is wearing a tailored acolyte garb, with a maternity waist cut; her hair is done up in tight braids.

“Naturally,” Prime says. “Information is the barest repayment for the losses I am incurring.”

The green gate field at the entrance to the throne room opens, revealing a clone in acolyte garb.

“What’s this?” Prime asks.

The clone enters, and scans the room. “Big brother,” he says. “I have reason to believe we have been covertly boarded; the attack on our fleet is a diversion.”

Prime looks at the clone with a level gaze. “Void.”

“Pardon?”

“You misspoke. A fleet is naval. The astral equivalent is a void,” Prime says.

“My lord, this is an impostor,” Spinnerella says.

Prime waves a hand. Six soldiers run forwards from the galleries, all levelling rifles at the clone.

The clone smirks. “Very good. Very good indeed.”

Micah stands, and gestures towards the clone, drawing a complex rune in the air. “ _Reveal your true nature._ ”

There’s a flash of blue light, and in the clone’s place stands an unusually tall and muscular feliform woman dressed in dark reds.

“Hello, ‘big brother;’ sorry about botching my line delivery.”

“Shoot her,” Prime says.

Six triggers are pulled, resulting in six ’click’s of six misfires. “Oof,” Catra says. “Better get those hammer springs looked at.”

Casually, Catra strolls up to the table, and for lack of a chair takes a seat on the edge of it, reaching for a carafe of that delicious yellow wine.

“Princess Spinnerella, please head immediately to the teleporter for deployment,” Prime says.

The clone attendant assists her with her chair, and the six clone soldiers fall in as her escort, synchronously charging their rifles, expelling six cartridges with light primer strikes.

“King Micah, please deal with this nuisance.”

Micah rises, holding out a hand, and the staff standing behind his chair leaps into his hand.

Catra, lacking a glass, steals Spinnerella’s dessert wine flute with her backhand. “Aw, I’m just here to talk, Prime. You used to be so civil.”

Prime gestures for to Micah to hold. “Then talk.”

Catra sips the wine. “Really? No ‘how did you survive?’ no ‘how did you get aboard my ship?’ Am I really going to have to carry this conversation?”

“Yes,” Prime says curtly.

Catra looks at Micah. “Y’majesty, your daughter is safe and sound back from the heavens, but if you’ve been chatting to the emperor of the galaxy, he has no doubt already told you of my misdeeds.”

“I’ve heard more than enough of your violent and unstable nature, Catra,” Micah says. “How you have terrorized my people, and how your actions resulted in my wife’s death.”

Catra blinks. “ _Oh!_ I bet you’ve been interrogating Hordak!” She gestures to the attendant, who is indeed the clone that once transgressed most egregiously by naming himself. “Pleased to tell you then that as of yesterday, I have undone that particular transgression. Your wife and daughter have been reunited — in life, mind — by my hand.”

Grinning, Catra turns to Prime. “Now, as for how I made it here, after you left me to so rudely fight Adora, you may remember that I shot myself. Turns out She-Ra can cure such fatal lead poisoning. And after that, we went to a little world called Krytis — rings a bell?”

Prime betrays no change in expression. “It does.”

“I’m not the little sister you sanitized, dear big brother,” Catra says, suddenly serious. “I’ve moved on from that and become your worst nightmare. You owe me a death; you owe _Krytis_ a rightful vengeance; you owe every conquered people in the galaxy their due; and I intend to collect on theirs, and my own, behalf.”

Prime chuckles. “You would honestly not believe how often I receive such declarations of sworn vengeance.”

Micah tenses. “She’s not alone.”

“And _there_ we see the instincts of the legendary battle mage!” Catra says.

Indeed, the attendant clone has vanished.

Micah gestures, drawing another complex rune, and the brilliant blue light comes as a directional floodlight; he sweeps the room until a shimmer is seen. “ _Reveal yourself!_ ” he bellows.

The shimmer breaks, and Catra winces.

There stands Entrapta, holding aloft Hordak in three of four tentacle arms, a paper charm over his face.

“Shit!” Entrapta exclaims.

Micah gestures, casting a binding spell of phenomenal power, and redirecting the paralysis rebound through one of his effigies in his belt.

But before he can complete the rune, there’s a blade at his throat. “Didn’t you ever learn not to take your eyes off your enemy?” Catra says, an inch from his face.

Then a gigantic stone fist checks her in the cheekbone, sending her tumbling over the table, sending food and drink flying.

Catra lands in a roll, unharmed. “Entrapta! Run!”

Entrapta engages her skates and rockets towards the green gate, already closing. The guards in the gallery spring into action, opening fire, and her omnitool springs out, encasing Hordak in a bulletproof shell. She throws a breaching device at the wall next to the gate, and it manages to open a passage just in time for her to race through out into the hall.

A section of clone soldiers sprint for the gate, which opens automatically, but as soon as they exit into the hall beyond, something opens fire, killing two and forcing the rest to take cover inside the throne room. A combat drone holding point, if Catra isn’t mistaken.

The thing that punched her in the face is a gigantic animate stone statue. Arms as thick as tree trunks, legs even thicker. Its torso is a featureless sphere; it almost looks ‘fat.’ All of it is wrought from grey marble.

“Misdirection is often more viable than straight illusory invisibility,” Micah says.

Then the giant stone figure’s spherical torso splits open, and Micah grabs the lip of the opening, swinging himself inside. The two halves close seamlessly. Then the golem picks up Micah’s staff, and the marble becomes transparent somehow, as if a viewing port of glass suddenly comes into being, revealing Micah’s face inside.

“Shit,” Catra says.

Manipulating his full length staff as if it was a mere wand, he draws a rune, and Catra dodges to the side as a lightning bolt tears through the space she just occupied.

“That’s supposed to be impossible to dodge,” Micah notes dryly.

“Yeah,” Catra says, and draws a single-shot grenade launcher out of thin air, pointing it at Micah.

He begins drawing a protective rune, and Catra nonchalantly turns it on Prime, still seated at the end of the table, and pulls the trigger. With a loud ‘ _thump_ ’ she sends a plastic cased chunk of high explosive directly into Prime’s face.

The explosion is deafening at that range, and Prime’s upper torso vanishes; coating the screens behind in a fine mist of off-color blood, viscera, and chunks of flesh and bone"

“Didn’t you ever learn never to let an assassin get a clear shot of their quarry?” Catra asks.

“Oh you misguided girl,” Micah says. “You cannot kill Horde Prime.”

Catra glances over at the pile of gore. “Seems pretty dead to me.”

“ _Appearances can be decieving, little sister._ ”

Next to Micah, a horde clone in battle armor walks up, nonchalantly, arms folded behind his back. Regal.

“Did you really think you are the first to have ever gotten a clear shot at me?” He draws the soldier’s service pistol. “I am _Horde Prime,_ and so long as my brethren draw breath I shall always have a vessel.”

Catra dismisses her grenade launcher. “Oh well. Then I guess I’m back to plan A.”

“Plan A?” Micah asks.

“Stalling the big bad dark sorcerer?” A Horde-made pistol appears in her hand and she shoots Prime in the head. “You really should star wearing helmets.”

Micah draws a rune, and Catra is on him in an eye-blink, slashing it in half with Bane. Micah counters with a deceptively quick jab with a stone hand. Catra dodges and puts the muzzle of a cartridge-actuated rail spike driver against the marble. With an ear-splitting report, a nine-inch steel spike punches into the stone, cracking it and sending gravel and dust flying.

Micah disengages and inspects the damages. “Troublesome.” With a gesture, the nail goes flying across the room, and with a single spell, mends the break in the golem’s arm.

Then an acolyte comes running to him, and he grabs the clone like a rag doll, and casts.

Catra feels the power coming even before the rune is completed. In Micah’s off hand, the clone withers away into a mummified corpse.

“ _Aeons in an instant!_ ” Micah bellows.

In a volume extending forth from Micah, an invisible change occurs in reality. The end of the table caught in the effect is the first to show change, as the food and drink instantly spoils, grows mold, then crumbles to dust. The paint and lacquer on the floor peels off revealing bare metal which rusts.

Catra is caught in the middle of the spell, shielding herself with both arms, as if it was some kind of energetic discharge one could block with a physical barrier.

Micah smirks as he sees the feliform warrior fall to one knee, her hair greying, and her clothes fraying. Resilient, this one.

She collapses, falling onto one side, and her skin shrivels up on her bones.

The field of altered entropy dissipates with the end of the spell.

Then the corpse vanishes into a cloud of black smoke.

There’s a ‘tink’ sound. Micah looks up to see Bane sitting on top of the marble dome, perpendicular to the surface, like a knife plunged into a cutting board.

“That was an impressive spell,” Catra says, leaping off the top of the golem. “Too bad you fell for my little parlour trick.”

Micah commands the sphere to rotate, bringing the sword down within easy reach of his stone arms. With one hand he grabs a hold of the hilt and pulls.

Bane doesn’t budge.

Then he puts both hands on and pulls with the full might of his war golem. It doesn’t budge. As he lets go, the tip sinks into the marble, prying off a little chip of material.

“I reckon you have a few minutes if you’re careful, before my blade cracks open your golem like a walnut.”

As a last desperate measure, Micah palm-strikes the pommel of Bane.

Bane snaps, the remainder of the blade and the hilt goes flying into the middle distance. That leaves the three inches of dark-grey blade still sitting in the crack in the marble. It vibrates, digging itself further into the stone.

Catra nonchalantly picks up Bane, now missing a section of its point, and with a shimmer of darkness, a new point grows out of the break, rendering the blade hale.

Inside the sphere of marble, Micah draws a circle with a finger in the marble, his digit passing through stone like water; and the front of the golem falls off, taking the tip of Bane with it.

“You are a troublesome opponent,” Micah notes, “who trained you in anti-magery?”

“I trained myself; to survive. Did Shadow Weaver never tell you about her _other_ adopted daughter?”

“She did not. But she was a hack; more concerned with politics than sorcery.”

“Yeah,” Catra says. “And yet she got to teach your daughter more sorcery than your sister ever did.”

Micah sneers, and with lightning-fast illusory calligraphy casts two spells. One, a flash of blue light that dissolves Catra’s illusory double, revealing her to be standing three feet to the left of her apparent position; the other a paralysis-and-pain spell condemned by Mystacor as forbidden magic for the sheer cruelty it requires one to muster.

“Ah,” Catra says, as the red field envelops her. “Shadow Weaver used to use this to discipline me.”

Completely ignoring the spell that supposedly could bring a dragon to its knees, Catra draws an automatic rifle, and levels it at Micah, who has to break the spell to shield his bare face and upper torso with the golem’s hands and a hastily cast bullet ward.

The gunfire stops and he lowers his hands to find the throne room empty. Catra has vanished.

* * *

Spinnerella exits the throne room, escorted by six soldier clones.

They walk straight past Netossa, Glimmer, and Bow, all three under the remnants of Catra’s invisibility, and a suite of misdirection spells.

A pair of carts arrive, the acolytes driving them stepping away. Spinnerella gets on one and the soldiers distribute themselves between the two.

They drive off, aft-wards in the ring.

Netossa waves them to follow, as the two small vehicles accelerate away from them. Glimmer takes off while Netossa and Bow are both on roller-skates.

Then Glimmer realizes what’s going on and with a beat of her wings gets in front of the others, flipping and stopping. “They’re going to the teleporter!”

Netossa wastes no time; two tethers shoot out from her hands, snaking under the undercarriages of the two carts, winding around the wheel axles. Immediately both carts stop hard, wheels immobilized.

“We’re under attack!” one of the clones yell.

“They’re wearing suppressors!” Glimmer yells, and casts a bullet ward, holding the spell up with both hands as the two others hunker down behind it. A hail of automatic gunfire impacts it. Spinnerella takes off down the hall, flying.

Bow draws his magic arrows, unfolds his bow, and taking two steps back, sends an arrow curving around the circular ward, into one of the clones, punching through body armor.

“Blink me!” Netossa yells. She puts a hand on Glimmer’s shoulder and vanishes in a puff of light, appearing right behind the five remaining clones, ray guns guns drawn. She drops each one in turn with a well-placed silent beam of fire to the back of the head.

Then Glimmer and Bow appear beside her.

Netossa and Bow takes off after Spinnerella, Bow on his powered skates, Netossa pulling herself along on tethers, while Glimmer bathes the hallway in liquid fire.

“Should we be wearing suppressor gear?!” Bow yells.

“No! It impedes Runestone powers, and Spinny isn’t going to kill us; she’s still in there!”

Up ahead, they approach an intersection. From the curving hallway running across their path, a platoon of soldiers emerge, setting up and unfolding mobile cover, and by the looks of it, a machine gun.

Bow screeches to a halt and Netossa reverses her momentum with a single well-placed tether. “Shit!”

Glimmer blinks in, and sees the roadblock. “Fighting is too slow!” She grabs both of them by the shoulder and blinks.

* * *

Spinnerella is fast — indeed so fast that her mere passage is enough to cause destruction, lest she diverts her power away from pure speed, and into managing her wake.

She reaches the teleporter room and places a hand on the console beside the door.

The metal gates slide open, and she glides in.

“Don’t move.” To her left, flush with the wall, stands Bow, arrow knocked on his bowstring.

“Oh no,” Spinnerella mutters.

To her right, Netossa steps forward, and Glimmer approaches her from the hallway outside.

“Spinny, you have to come with us,” Netossa says. “Cease this; this _madness._ Please. For both of us, I know you’re still in there. We got Peekablue back; Princess Entrapta and She-Ra can help you.”

Spinnerella shakes her head. “You don’t understand, do you? I’m not ‘in there,’ I’m still _me,_ ’Toss. And I love you. But I _cannot_ come home. Not anymore.”

“Then we’re going to have to do this the hard way,” Netossa says.

“You know I can defeat the three of you,” Spinnerella says, “or are you so blinded by your convictions that you think you stand a chance? I should… I should—” She looks away, and wipes a tear. “Listen, you three. We know where you hide, down there, underground. While you are up here, an attack is underway.”

“Shit!” Bow says.

“Uh,” Glimmer says. “I sense some soldiers approaching, I think!”

Netossa reacts, throwing out a tether. Spinnerella doesn’t even move — she never does. The string of solid light hits a shockwave compressed air, throwing it off course.

Then Netossa collapses, heaving for breath, a strange vibration in her chest. She coughs. “I. Can’t. I— I can’t…”

Bow looses an arrow, which veers off course, embedding itself harmlessly in the far wall. Spinnerella waves a hand and a hurricane-force wind throws him against the wall, hard.

“I’m so sorry, ’Toss,” Spinnerella says, “don’t worry, it only feels like you’re suffocating.”

Behind her Glimmer casts a lightning spell, weak enough to stun rather than kill, and Spinnerella counters it with a barrier of vacuum, causing the electricity to seek ground elsewhere.

“Don’t test your luck, cousin,” she says over her shoulder to Glimmer. “I have less qualms about hurting you or your ranger than I do my wife.”

A tears runs down her cheek as Spinnerella glides onward, over to the teleporter. She enters the coordinates with practiced motions, and steps onto the green crystal disk in time for the containment field to spring up.

“I love you, ’Toss. I do hope one day you’ll come to realize what you need to do.”

Then the machine energizes, and in a flash of light, sends Spinnerella away, and with her, the resonant frequency of sound keeping Netossa from breathing properly.

Glimmer blinks over to the console. “She’s teleported down to Etheria,” she says.

Then she blinks to Bow’s side, helping him to his feet. Then blinks both of them to Netossa.

Netossa coughs a few times, then breathes deeply of the stale re-circulated air in her suit. “We need to get back to the ship. Glimmer?”

Both clasping hands with Glimmer, she blinks the three of them to safety.

Seconds later the chamber floods with soldiers.

* * *

Every fiber of Adora’s being hurts, and the starlight does nothing to ease the pain. With a heave, and grit teeth holding back a scream of pain, she heaves another javelin, which strikes true. She’s lost count; somewhere in the low hundreds.

Cannon fire impacts their protective veil like raindrops, despite Glory’s best efforts at dodging, making short jaunts to escape the worst. Stella Nova’s protective veil of silk is beginning to fray.

And then suddenly, Adora is blinded by white light; at first she thinks the telescopic goggles Halcyon has shaped itself into are malfunctioning, but as the bauble of gold leaps to her belt, she finds no change.

“Glory, I can’t see.”

Glory hoots under her.

A vision enters her head, of flying through the void of space, Etheria stretched out under her.

“Is this what you’re seeing? You’re lending me your sight?”

Another hoot.

Glory looks up, and there, above them, an enormous portal engine signature appears. Out of the swirling distortion and energetic discharges, the Iron Fist emerges.

A cylindrical mountain of white. Hundreds of cannons swivel in their turrets to aim at them. Hundreds of stroboscopic flashes of orange light herald the incoming hailstorm of trans-relativistic steel.

“Take us down to the surface! Now!” Adora screams.

Glory flips over in flight, angling the dorsal side of their wings and tail prograde of their orbit and flaring starlight so intense their feathers singe. Within a second, their trajectory drops within the atmosphere of Etheria, and Glory summons the portal energies inside them.

Emerging into the upper atmosphere though a portal jaunt energizes the thin atmosphere for hundreds of miles, creating a self-propagating ionization wave that from the ground looks not unlike polar lights.

Every piece of electrical equipment within yet more hundreds of miles sees serious potential surges; every radio on the planet currently tuned to a wide band of signals hears nothing but overpowering static.

Adora loses consciousness from the blast, Glory flies on, going into a re-entry dive using purely their instinctual spinal brain.

* * *

The Swift Wind releases hold of the Velvet Glove, and accelerates _hard._

Damara materializes in the cargo hold to find Catra, Netossa, Glimmer, and Bow.

Netossa is breathing heavily and occasionally coughing. Glimmer is already stripping Bow of his armor. Catra is sitting against the wall, eyes closed.

“Did Entrapta make it back?” Catra asks.

“She did; we would not be flying otherwise. I take it Spinnerella proved recalcitrant?”

“Damara, I need you to check Bow for a concussion,” Glimmer says.

“I’m just a bit dizzy,” Bow says.

“Shut up, love,” Glimmer says. “Damara, I think Refuge II is under attack, we need to get to ground _now._ ”

Damara looks to the side for a moment. “Wrodak is on it. How do you know?”

“Spinny told us,” Netossa says. “I… I think we got through to her.”

“Netossa,” Glimmer says, “it is with all due respect that I say this, but your wife is a monster.”

“Same goes for your dad, Sparkles,” Catra says. “And for all of us, really.” She gets up. “Damara, any news on our captain?”

Damara looks away. “They went behind Etheria, and I detected a jaunt re-entry.”

“Which is?”

“The reason you don’t use portal engines in atmosphere,” Damara says. “Whatever happened, they got desperate enough to brave it anyway… There’s— There’s a better than even chance that—”

“Shut up,” Catra says, cutting her off. “Don’t say shit like that. Adora is _fine;_ because she is always _fine._ ”

Damara hands bow a set of index cards, and asks him to read a series of oddly-arranged numbers aloud, timing him, and recording his errors mis-speaks.

The verdict is a probable concussion. Enhancements and helmet likely took the worst of the impact.

Glimmer takes him to lie down.

Catra heads to the armoury to unload; they made a detour on the way to the throne room to raid an armoury.

Hordak is lying in the infirmary, under Sweet Bee’s charm to hide him from Prime, and Catra’s darkness for good measure; drugged into a gentle coma, for now. Entrapta isn’t leaving his side.

Wrodak sneaks them back planet-side. The trip is agonizingly slow, as the Horde’s low-orbit presence has multiplied tenfold as a response to Adora’s attack.

Catra tries calling Adora on her communicator every five minutes, by the clock, despite Damara’s assurance that the electromagnetic pulse likely destroyed her equipment.

* * *

Adora comes to her senses, still blind. Her entire skin feels sunburnt.

She’s hanging, almost upside down, by the tether connecting her belt to the saddle, and quickly calls on Halcyon for a pair of cutters. Severing the tether, she falls, tumbling against Glory’s stiff feathers, and lands hard, awkwardly, and directly on a root.

She struggles to catch her breath.

“Glory?” she asks.

There’s no reply.

Fumbling blind, she makes her way across the forest floor — it is unmistakably a forest, and probably the Whispering Woods going by the smell — to Glory. Carefully by touch, Adora outlines the gigantic bird, and concludes they are sitting, completely immobile. A hard shove is met with movement, so at least they aren’t dead.

She takes out her communicator. “Call Catra.”

Nothing.

“Call Starla.”

Nothing.

“Are you even working?”

She pokes the screen a few times. Then in frustration, she punches the small rectangle of reinforced metal and glass. There’s a slight snapping sound as the screen cracks.

Adora growls and snaps the useless device in half.

She fumbles around a bit for a whisper oak’s root and takes a seat, considering her options. Her sight isn’t coming back, or it would already have been healed by the sheer volume of starlight she has been channelling.

It might come back with time — so waiting to see is definitely an option, but not a very appealing one.

Setting into the woods bereft of the sense most important to navigation, threat assessment, and combat is asking for trouble.

Dimly she recalls reading about portal engine drive safety, and how you are _not_ supposed to activate them in atmosphere. Despite Stella Nova’s protection, she still lost consciousness; how they made it down safely is a mystery.

Hopefully their re-entry was ‘loud’ enough to alert her friends that she’s in trouble… Unfortunately by the same logic, it might have alerted the Horde too.

If only she had a communicator that worked.

And then a dense little rectangle lands in her hand.

“I’m an idiot,” Adora mutters to herself. “Call Catra.”

She waits on the call to go through for a full minute, and it doesn’t. An automated voice suggests her to leave a message.

“Hey Cat, it’s me. I crashed, but I’m alive and mostly unscathed. Stranded; don’t know exactly where. Call me when you have time.”

She hangs up.

“Call Starla.”

The call waits for almost half a minute.

“ _Adora!_ ” Starla calls out. “ _Good! You’re safe; how’s Glory?_ ”

“Sleeping, I think. We had a mishap on re-entry.”

“ _Shit! Look, I’ll see if I can come get them, but we’re kinda under attack here. We could use your help, if you can just port here—_ ”

A chill runs down Adora’s spine. “Starla, I— I’m not in good shape, something happened to my eyes, I can’t see. I can’t fight.”

There’s a pause. “ _Fuck._ ”

“Look, try calling the others… I’ll stay put here, wherever _here_ is, and hope it’s safe. Just— Good luck, okay?”

“ _They’re already here. Thanks._ ”

The call cuts out, and Adora hugs herself. She sits there on that root, alone with her worries for what feels like a long while. The sounds of the forest around her are at once soothing and a source of stress; she keeps jumping at unfamiliar sounds.

“Hey.”

Adora turns to the sound. “Who’s there?”

“Me!”

It’s a child’s voice. Little feet come treading through the underbrush.

“Are ye crying?”

Adora wipes her eyes. “Maybe a little.”

Then she hears the child come up to her, and take a seat next to her. “Ma pa says ain’t na shame in crying when ye’r sad.”

Adora nods. “Do you know where this is?”

“It’s the forest!”

“Yes but _which_ forest?” Adora presses.

“ _The_ forest. Ye’r a strange one ta even ask!”


	6. Manumission, Part 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cw: violence, surgery

They reach orbit, and Catra, waiting by her communicator, dials immediately as soon as the connection can be made. She jams an earpiece in her ear, and lets the communicator itself vanish — how it can telecommunicate from within her bag of tricks, she doesn’t know.

“Call Lonnie.”

“ _Catra?_ ” Lonnie says.

“Lonnie, prepare to evacuate the city; I have intel that an attack will commence soon. It _may_ be misdirection, but I doubt it. Princess Spinnerella leaked it.”

“ _I’ll get Peekablue to confirm. Hurry back._ ”

“We’ll be there in minutes,” Catra says, looking at Glimmer, who gives a thumb up. She can blink them in from orbit, leaving Wrodak and Damara to take Swift Wind somewhere safe.

“Bow,” Damara says, arms crossed, “I really must advise you to stay in the infirmary; your brain could be in a vulnerable state right now, the more strenuous physical activity you do, the higher the chances of chronic complications down the line.”

Bow nods, suiting up anyway. “I know what head trauma can do,” he says. “I understand the risks.”

Damara turns to Entrapta, already wearing her bulky exoskeleton. She caresses Entrapta’s helmet visor, as if it was her cheek. “Stay safe down there.”

“I don’t intend on putting myself in danger,” Entrapta says.

Bow flips his visor down, and takes Glimmer’s outstretched hand. Entrapta takes her other hand, and Netossa and Catra join up.

“Be on your guard, everybody,” Catra says.

“You don’t have to tell me,” Netossa remarks.

“On three,” Glimmer says. “Three.”

* * *

They appear in the central plaza of Refuge II, much to the surprise of onlookers.

“Lonnie, we’re here talk to us,” Catra says.

“ _That was fast. Peekablue says to stand by; I’m mustering every Wielder we have. There’s a chance they’re sending Scorpia, or worse, Huntara._ ”

“And Mermista to flood the place?” Catra asks.

“ _Not while her daughter is in it._ ”

“You’re using lil’ Adora to ward off—” Glimmer says, horrified. “Holy shit.”

“ _If it works, it works. Be on the lookout._ ”

“Netossa, Glimmer, eyes in the sky,” Catra barks. “Bow, get to high ground; if things get hot focus on assisting evacuation instead of fighting —” Bow is about to protest “— you’re wounded, soldier, pace yourself. Entrapta make yourself available for evacuation and search-and-rescue.”

As one, the four others move out: Glimmer blinks away and Netossa rockets up into the dome on a tether, leaving Catra standing alone in the plaza; Bow and Entrapta both skate away. She rolls her shoulders. “Lonnie, send the front-line fighters to me. That’d be… Frosta, Perfuma, Cometa?”

“ _Already suiting up._ ”

Catra’s hands go to her lips, as she idly contemplates taking up smoking again. It’s not like it’ll ever negatively impact her lung function now that she’s Melog. And the smoke might work to her advantage.

Soon enough, Frosta slides up on the smooth powered skates of her power suit. It almost puts Entrapta’s work to shame. “Who built your suit, Snowflake?” Catra asks.

“Kyle and Rogelio,” Frosta says, from behind the vaguely skull-inspired visor. “And if you ever call me that again, I’ll punch you in your punchable face.”

Cometa appears, levitating along on a cushion of magnetism between her own suit’s steel armor panels — the standard issue is composite ceramics — and the metal floor.

“How’d it go with the space girl?”

Cometa doesn’t dignify that with a comment.

A portal opens, and the enormous plant monster Perfuma is fond of inhabiting wiggles through. The creature opens its mouth, and Perfuma peeks out.

“Hey, Green Thumbs,” Catra says, losing her jovial tone. “You and Scorpia are close, right?”

“We… Were, yes,” Perfuma says, hesitantly, “why do you ask?”

“Because that means she’ll probably go easy on you, and if that is the case, you are to stall her with everything you can. Stay safe; you know better than I what she’s capable of.”

Perfuma nods. “Got it.” Then she disappears into the belly of the monster once more.

Catra looks back at Frosta and Cometa. “I’ve only read the dossier; but Frosta, you focus on preventing her from using heat as a weapon, Cometa, get us some lightning rods to divert her lightning.”

“You seem pretty sure it’s not Huntara we’re going to be facing,” Frosta says.

“Gut feeling.”

“And what, we’re supposed to trust you?” Cometa asks.

“Haven’t been wrong so far. Also, consider that it used to be my career to kick you guys’ asses _before_ I became off-brand She-Ra. If I wasn’t good, I’d be dead; you guys make for terrifying opponents.”

* * *

The streets empty, as the order is passed around to stand by for.

“ _I have something,_ ” Netossa says over comms, “ _west main street, one moment._ ”

“ _I see it,_ ” Glimmer adds.

“ _Floor is bulging upwards, and hot! Glimmer, evacuate those buildings! Lonnie, sound the alarm!_ ”

A klaxon goes off.

The streets become busy very shortly after, as the people of Refuge II head to evacuation portals dotting up around the city. Civilians, though the majority of them may be, it is orderly and fast — Refuge I still fresh in mind, they remember what happens to those who fall behind.

“Netossa, get me a flare,” Catra says. No sooner has she said it than a brilliant red light ignites up in the air under the dome, suspended by a tether.

Frosta takes off in jet-powered leap, Cometa larches herself after with smooth grace, and Perfuma’s war form scampers off.

Catra opens a portal with her right hand, and steps through, onto a rooftop, then from there to the next rooftop, and so on. The roofs are all bare, only a deck for standing and building the floors for any additional stories. There is no weather to fend off underground.

Within two seconds, Catra is close enough to see with her own eyes. A section of floor, ten yards across is beginning to glow dull red. The heat can be felt from where she crouches on a roof corner.

Uniformed — in as much as the resistance militia has a uniform — soldiers keep the civilians well away from the danger.

“It’s Scorpia, no doubt,” Catra says, “Huntara can’t make that kind of heat, can she?”

“ _No, she can’t,_ ” Netossa replies.

The middle of the patch goes orange, then yellow, then white, and finally with an eruption, a lightning bolt breaks through, shooting into the dome roof, marring the white reflector panels.

A shower of molten rock and metal falls over the street and buildings, setting them alight.

“Frosta!” Catra calls out, “can you fight fires?”

Frosta, on a different nearby rooftop, says nothing, but the fires vanish as quickly as they started, and the pools of lava surrounding the breach freeze solid.

With a leap, Scorpia comes sailing out of the white-hot crater, trailing foul volcanic smoke. Her modesty is preserved by a compression top and shorts in grey-black material — perhaps woven carbon fibre. Other than that, she is nude, and rivulets of molten white steel run off her like water.

Catra swallows her desire to say something to the effect of _I’m scared but that’s kinda hot._

“Stay out of sight, let’s see what direction she’s heading,” Catra says.

Scorpia gets her bearings, seeing the distant soldiers, who are already pointing Zev rifles at her, and ignores them. She starts walking.

“Lonnie, tell your men to keep their distance, this could turn ugly.”

A few seconds later, the soldiers retreat with the fleeing civilians.

“Frosta, stand by to put out fires, Perfuma, you’re up, Glimmer stand by to extract. Remember, we’re here to buy time so evacuation can proceed.”

Perfuma’s war form climbs over the buildings lining the main street, and onto the street proper, behind Scorpia. The monster opens its jaws, and Perfuma emerges from inside it.

“Hello, Scorpia.”

Scorpia turns. “Hey, Perfect,” she greets.

They stand there for a beat.

* * *

“ _Keep her talking,_ ” Catra says in Perfuma’s ear, watching from afar.

“Perfect, please don’t try to stop me,” Scorpia says to her. “I don’t want to hurt anybody I don’t have to.”

“ _Lonnie, I need you to get me ARW projectors, a lot of them; I know she’s immune, but it’s worth a shot to try with twenty at once._ ”

“Scorpia, you don’t have to do this…”

Scorpia frowns. “No, I really do, Perfect. It’s… It’s the only thing I _can_ do. I’m the muscle, remember?”

“You know I have to try to stop you, right?” Perfuma says, hugging herself.

“Yeah.”

Perfuma looks away.

“I really do miss you, Perfect,” Scorpia says. “So… Just know I’m sorry about this—”

“Scorpia?” Perfuma manages.

In a streak of black, pale and red, Scorpia rockets past her and in a leap that dents the steal floor, throws herself at Perfuma’s plant monster. With a single swipe of her pincers, and a thunderclap, she slices the beast in half.

“ _No!_ ” Perfuma screams, reaching out a hand. By her power, the beast is already reconstituting itself, vines growing from the open wounds, attempting to knit the severed halves together.

Scorpia waves an arm, and lightning springs from the tip of her pincer, charring and immolating the writhing mass of botanical horror.

Perfuma to her credit throws caution and a handful of seeds to the wind; which in the air unfold into little watergas-explosive balloon critters. They all detonate three feet from Scorpia, harmlessly.

Then Scorpia turns to Perfuma, looking genuinely heartbroken. “Please don’t make me hurt you anymore; I can’t take it.”

Perfuma falls to her knees.

“ _Glimmer, get Perfuma out of there._ ”

Glimmer appears already with a hand on Perfuma’s shoulder, and then blinks them both halfway across town.

“Can you make a new one?” Glimmer asks.

Perfuma nods. “Of course… But she won’t be the same. I won’t be the same. There was a part of me in her.”

“I know what that’s like,” Glimmer notes. “It’s okay if you want to sit this one out.”

* * *

Catra considers her options. She needs backup. “Starla, come in?”

“ _I hear you._ ”

“I need you to get a hold of Adora.”

“ _Roger._ ”

Catra hops down from her perch and strolls up the street where Scorpia is standing, collecting herself a little.

With long strides, Catra advances into earshot of her old comrade and ex-lover. “So; how does it feel to hurt people? Do you like it as much as I did?”

Scorpia spins to glare at her. “ _Catra!_ ”

“Good job with your little ‘perfect’ there, I’m _sure_ she’s going to run off and stuff a bug up her nose now, just to be with you.”

With an enraged roar, Scorpia throws a thunderbolt directly at Catra — or at least what appears to be Catra. In fact, she is standing twenty feet to the left of her apparent position, invisible. A mere shadow-made image is what is vaporized by the energetic discharge, revealing a rod of steel standing on the floor, harmlessly dissipating the electricity into the floor.

“Wow,” Catra says, continuing to approach. “That struck a nerve.”

Scorpia, with heat waves billowing about her, eyes aglow in red does not immediately attempt to incinerate Catra.

“Yeah, you _think?!_ ” Scorpia yells, with booming voice.

Catra’s cocky smirk vanishes. “Scorpia, I don’t want to hurt you; and I’m pretty sure I _can._ You deserved way better than me, and I am so, so sorry for what I made you do to Entrapta.”

Scorpia flings another bolt of lightning, and Catra sidesteps it.

“How—?” Scorpia mutters.

“Hey, I’m trying to give you a heartfelt apology here; just cause Prime shoved a bug in your nose, that doesn’t change anything.”

“ _Shit,_ ” Netossa says in Catra’s ear. “ _I just saw something move out of that hole she came in through, it’s so fast I can’t—_ ”

“ _It’s Mermista!_ ” Frosta yells.

Catra holds up a hand to Scorpia. “You guys will have to handle her. I’ll keep Scorpia busy.”

“You’re gong to lose this one, Catra,” Scorpia says.

Catra shakes her head. “Look around you. Empty streets. I don’t know how but they built this place in _days._ As long as the resistance has people, they’ll be a thorn in Prime’s side.” Then she draws a squad support machine gun and opens fire.

Scorpia doesn’t even move, the holographic bullets just ricochet off her skin. Then she kicks the ground and her foot digs into the steel floor panel which turns orange with the consistency of putty. The kick sends red-hot floor fragments flying at Catra who barely manages to swap her gun for Cometa’s shield.

The little glued-on plate of steel over the bullet hole gets knocked loose.

* * *

Mermista is _fast,_ and Glimmer never really realized just how fast. From above she catches glimpse of her, and only thanks to the Moonstone’s ability to gauge density at a distance, can she follow the blob of water containing the white-clad Empress with her eyes.

She flows through the side streets heading directly for the main elevator bank.

“Oh _no_ you don’t,” Glimmer says, and blinks into the shaft.

Moments later, the doors below her are perforated by a needle-fine jet of water that turns to mist in the wide elevator shaft. Ten seconds later the cut completes and the doors burst open.

Water flows into the shaft, as if alive, and then Mermista, completely submerged in it comes into view. She looks up into the dark, spotting Glimmer.

Glimmer casts a barrier spell and the glowing sigil of it grows to encompass the entire shaft.

Mermista’s water picks up one of the doors, flips it over a few times as if by gelatinous hands, then pools below it, bunching up. Suddenly the door and the mass of water beneath it disappears, replaced by a vertical spicule of water.

The barrier shatters. Above Glimmer, a tremendous racket erupts as several hundred pounds of elevator door impacts the elevator car above at near the speed of sound.

Glimmer processes what just happened, and looks down at Mermista. Inside the water, blurred by the shifting surface, Mermista makes eye contact and slowly shakes her head. With her water, she picks up the _other_ door.

The message is clear: _don’t try it, I will hurt you._

Glimmer blinks up to the lobby chamber half a mile above, appearing in the midst of the forty strong guard crew.

“Run for your lives!” Glimmer yells. “Portals! Now! Evacuate!”

“What—” an officer begins.

“Mermista is coming!”

That gets them all moving. Portals are summoned and within a thirty seconds, the last man runs through, leaving the hall empty. Behind her, a jet of water begins cutting the elevator doors, and Glimmer blinks away, down into Refuge, directly to the front gate of an armoury which is thankfully still intact.

Running inside, she passes directly by Lonnie who manages a surprised “ _Princess?!_ ”

She bursts into the back rooms, to find twenty militia soldiers already gearing up with suppressor projectors. “Gimme one!” Glimmer yells at them, and a startled minotaur woman hands hers off.

Blinking back up, Glimmer finds a pair of elevator doors discarded on the floor, and a wet trail leading past the piles of sandbags. Every autonomous cannon turret has been cut in half.

She blinks out into the colonnade courtyard, where Mermista has already blown the riddle gate open. She catches sight of the water moving out into the forest and blinks again to intercept, landing between the trees directly in the path of Mermista’s incoming water mass.

She levels the projector and turns it on.

Coming into view, the water turns from a gelatinous mass into a crashing wave, flooding the underbrush.

Mermista tumbles to the ground. She’s clad in white body armor.

“Not one more step,” Glimmer says.

Mermista rises to her feet. “Please don’t do this to me; not while you hold my daughter hostage.”

“I don’t care, you’re coming with me,” Glimmer says, pointing her staff at Mermista. She puts down the suppressor, carefully keeping it pointed at Mermista, before advancing. From her belt she takes a pair of suppressor cuffs.

Mermista meanwhile looks at a screen on her wrist. “Hah, nice.”

“What?”

“We’re far enough from Dagon Rock that we’re out from under the spell you cast on it.”

Glimmer feels the incoming teleportation energy, and reacts before there’s even a visible sign of danger, drawing her pistol and aiming without looking, she shoots twice behind her. Two holographic bullets punch holes in the suppressor behind her, ending its effect, and just as several hundred Horde clones teleport in, she blinks out.

* * *

“ _Mermista made it out, we’ve got clone soldiers incoming!_ ”

“Frosta, Cometa, Netossa,” Catra says.

“ _On it!_ ” Frosta says.

“ _We’ve got another problem,_ ” Netossa says, “ _Spinnerella is here._ ”

Catra steps back through a portal, emerging hundreds of yards away, just as a shockwave tears down several buildings. Seeing as she can’t hit Catra with lightning, Scorpia has resorted to wide-are attack. Shockwaves made snapping her pincers, mostly.

“ _Heads up everyone,_ ” Peekablue chimes in suddenly, “ _Spinnerella is going to head for Sweet Bee; we’re going to have to evacuate now, so look out for wasps!_ ”

“No, stay as long as you can!” Catra barks back. “Netossa keep your wife busy, Lonnie, how are your guys coming?”

“ _Ready to go, just give the order, we’re tracking your earpiece,_ ” Lonnie replies.

“Perfuma, I could _really_ use that a war form of yours!” Catra says, and takes off running towards Scorpia’s position.

“ _I’m working on it!_ ”

Catra turns a corner, getting a view of Scorpia. She has already confirmed that the Black Garnet allows the woman to resist bullets — metal and holographic — raygun beams, gravitron beams, and a variety of explosives.

“I really hope you can resist this,” Catra mutters to herself and draws a weapon: grotesquely large and bulky, obviously designed for tripod mounting, and barely classifiable as ‘small-arms.’ It is the crown jewel of the weapon patterns in Swift Wind’s databases. It has no official designation, as the weapon class was never developed into proper mass production, an this is technically just a functional prototype. Its designer never put a name on it; only named the action: _Baryon-Fermion-Gravitron Nonagon Kappa._

“Hey!” Catra yells. “Eat this!”

With a pull of the trigger, the weapon’s business end spins up, and a huge sphere of blindingly bright energy coalesces, then speeds away. A ball lightning, tinged blue; bolts of plasma discharge leaps off it seeking ground, as it flies down the street, sweeping aside debris by a projected field of repulsive force.

It strikes true — in a sense. The arcs of glowing energy leap to Scorpia’s form as it gets close, and Scorpia clearly strains against the force. But then her pincers come together, closing around the pellet of energy, catching it, even as it sends her sliding backwards across the steel floor.

She stands straight, and the angry mass of destruction floats up from her grasp, to hang above her shoulder.

Catra frowns, then presses the _second_ button on the weapon, upsetting the quantum link between the generator in the weapon, and the projectile. Magnetohydrodynamic plasma containment immediately fails, and the menacing orb under Scorpia’s control immediately explodes, leveling six nearby houses.

Dismissing the weapon, Catra leaps forward through a portal, into the crater, before the cloud of smoke and dust even clears. Ahead of her in the dimness, she sees Scorpia, rising out of the ground, electrical arcs jumping off her.

“Now!” Catra yells.

Around them, ten portals open, and twenty men with suppressors step out pointing all of them at the two.

The smoke and dust clears by a strange squall, and Catra casts a quick glance up to see Spinnerella fly overhead, pursued by Netossa swinging on a tether and Glimmer in flight.

Scorpia orients herself, seeing herself surrounded. “Catra, did you really thing this would work?” she yells. Then she takes a wide stance and begins channelling her power.

Nothing happens for a beat, and then the first suppressor at the edge of the cater explodes in a plume of smoke.

Catra moves.

A shadow billows over her, and unnatural vigor suffuses her muscles; straining against her shorts, sleeves, and stockings. Her upper arms bulk out to the size of her thighs, and her hands grow into beastly paws with armored knuckles.

She leaps directly through a portal, emerging two yards from Scorpia, pivots spinning, digging one hand into the ground for extra leverage, and connects a monstrous kick with Scorpia’s side.

Scorpia tumbles like a rag doll, landing thirty feet away.

Another suppressor goes up in smoke.

Scorpia kips up, and turns to face Catra, already approaching fast. Her tail comes up, swiping like a venomous snake, with force enough to pierce steel, and strikes empty air where Catra appears to be. A cross counter from two feet to the left hits her cheek hard enough to cause her to stumble.

Another puff of smoke.

Scorpia lunges forward, and catches Catra by the hips, bringing them both to the ground hard enough to shake the earth. Catra puts both paws on Scorpia’s back and digs in her claws, piercing flesh. She lets out a yell of pain and her tail comes down, directly in Catra’s face.

Catra only narrowly avoids the tail tip, by pushing it aside with her invisible backhand. The stinger punches a hole in the dented steel under her.

Sixteen suppressors left.

Changing tactics, Catra raises her hands up in balled fists, and brings them down with the force of steam hammers. Scorpia clinches harder around her waist, and Catra feels her hip pop out of socket, biting back the pain. The barbed tail comes up, and Catra counters with her own tail, growing it longer and stronger, curling it in a spiral around Scorpia’s.

Fifteen.

Then salvation comes in the form of huge hand-like paws of living ironwood, landing around them.

Two of them reach in, pointy claw-like fingers coming in between the two of them, and with a heave, the gigantic plant creature tears the two of them apart.

Scorpia twists to see, and is met with a flower-like face of five-jawed maw, opening and exhaling a cloud of spores in her face.

“ _Got her,_ ” Perfuma says, as Scorpia goes limp in her hand.

“Get her out of here,” Catra says. “Now! And make absolutely sure you keep her knocked out.”

She adducts her hip by curling her tail around her thigh and knee, twisting just right, and gets to her feet.

Perfuma orders a portal, and somehow squeezes the enormous bulk of her new war form through a too-small opening in spacetime.

“All of you! Evacuate _now!_ ” Catra yells at the men around the lip of the cater. “Everyone report!”

“ _We’ve got incoming,_ ” Frosta says. “ _They’re coming down the elevator shaft on hover harnesses._ ”

“Can you deal with them?”

“ _Negative, Mermista is with them._ ”

Catra looks up, and spots Spinnerella, still being pursued by Netossa and Glimmer. Clearly a stalling tactic — two of hers for one of theirs.

“ _Evacuation is complete,_ ” Lonnie notes.

“All right, did everybody hear that? Disengage, I repeat, disengage, we have captured Scorpia!” Catra says.

“ _One moment,_ ” Cometa says.

In the distance, Catra hears a cacophony of explosions.

“ _Hah! They forgot to shield their weapons! I can hold the soldiers off! You you can deal with the Empress, we stand a chance of winning this!_ ”

Catra portals onto a rooftop, and looks towards the elevator banks, across town. A plume of dust billows into the sky where Cometa just eliminated who knows how many soldiers in one swoop.

“ _Mermista’s gone!_ ” Frosta yells.

“ _And that’s our cue to get the hell out of here,_ ” Peekablue says. “ _You guys are on your own._ ”

Catra turns and looks back at the hole Scorpia, Mermista, and Spinnerella came through. She feels the dread rise in her stomach, like bile.

And then it comes; a black, writhing cloud of wasps, bursting through like a geyser.

“ _Wasps!_ Get out, _Now!_ ” Catra yells.

* * *

Adora sits there, in a forest she doesn’t know, unable to see, knowing only that her friends are likely fighting for their livelihoods — if not their lives — and there is nothing she can do about it.

Meanwhile the kid, Glen, age six, and probably faun given that he mentioned his fathers antlers, is talking about the horses back on their farm.

“Me ma says people are having bugs up eir noshes.”

Adora tenses a little. “Does your mom and dad have bugs up their noses?”

“Nah, I looked once when they were sleeping. And not me either!”

She isn’t sure why, but she is inclined to believe him.

“That’s good. The nose bugs are very bad things,” Adora says.

“Do ye have a nosh bug?”

Adora shakes her head. “Some of my friends do. I’m trying to save them.”

Then there’s a sound, and a rush of air. “Adora!” Starla says.

Adora stands up. “Starla?!”

“Good to see you in one piece, who’s the kid?”

“I’m Glen!” the kid says.

“Run along now, Glen,” Adora says. “It was nice speaking to you, but I have to go.”

“Okay! Bye, white lady!” Glen says followed by a patter of cloven-hooved feet through the underbrush.

“Let’s get you back to the Swift Wind,” Starla says, and puts a hand on Adora’s arm.

“Is Glory okay?” Adora asks.

“Yeah, don’t worry, they’re just sleeping. We can leave them here for now and come by with the ship later to pick them up.”

“Leave them here?” Adora asks, horrified. “Is that safe? What if someone spots them?”

“Oh right, you can’t see. Glory is lying under a rocky overhang. What I’m more worried about is that kid.”

Adora shakes her head. “Nobody is going to believe him, I don’t think.”

“Good, come along, then.”

Starla leads her through a portal onto a hard, familiar floor, and the familiar filtered air of the Swift Wind.

“What happened?”

“They found us. Catra and the Runestone Wielders stalled for time while I and others helped evacuated the civilians. Everyone got away, and we managed to capture Scorpia.”

“That’s good?”

Starla shrugs. “We lost the city, though. What happened to you?”

“I think I used too much starlight,” Adora says, gesturing to her eyes, which has gone from blue to pale grey. “Then Prime sent the Iron Fist to finish us off, and Glory jaunted us to the surface. Next thing I remember, I’m hanging upside down.”

“That crazy bird, they jaunted into atmosphere,” Starla says.

They reach their destination; the infirmary.

“Okay, since you can’t see: Entrapta is here, by Hordak’s side, and then Scorpia is lying unconscious, with Perfuma by _her_ side.”

“Hello,” Adora says.

“You can’t see?” Perfuma asks.

Adora shakes her head. “Overused starlight.”

“Can— can you help me with the wasp extraction surgery?” Entrapta asks.

Adora shakes her head. “I don’t know; I might need some rest first.”

“Adora?!” Catra asks.

Adora turns, which is fairly meaningless.

Catra doesn’t make any noise before sweeping her into a hug. “Catra,” Adora says.

Catra pulls back. “What happened to your eyes? And you look sunburnt, too.”

“I think I went blind from Starlight,” Adora says.

Then Catra takes her face in her hands, and two gentle thumbs come to rest on Adora’s eyelids, rubbing gently, as if to wipe away tears.

A wave of coolness flows over her body, calming her heart which has been beating fast this whole time, and lifting the weight of stress from her shoulders.

Adora’s eyes flutter open, and the white fog fades, revealing Catra’s face, three inches from her own.

It’s the most beautiful sight she has ever seen; as if a distillation of the reason she can even see to begin with.

Heat rises to her cheeks.

“Did that help?” Catra asks.

Adora just nods.

Catra pats her on the cheek. “Now go do your healing thing.”

Adora turns to head back into the infirmary, and looks over her shoulder one more time at Catra.

* * *

They do Scorpia first. Perfuma sits in on the entire surgery, as Entrapta carefully extracts the dead sanitizing wasp and it’s many long tendrils from Scorpia’s nasal cavity and fore-brain.

The EEG zeroes, and the respirator takes over Scorpia’s breathing.

“Adora,” Entrapta says.

Adora steps up to the operating table, and lays a hand on Scorpia’s forehead. She closes her eyes and thinks about the moment her sight came back.

There’s a brilliantly sharp flash of light.

“We’ve got brain waves again,” Entrapta notes. “Turning off breathing assist.” She flips a switch. “Steady breathing. Extubating.”

She pulls the plastic tube out of Scorpia’s throat with care.

“Perfuma, if you would go ahead and wake her up?”

Perfuma approaches, and holds a hand out over Scorpia. By her power, the sleep-inducing spores coursing through her system disintegrate.

Shortly after, Scorpia’s eyes open. She looks over at Perfuma as the first thing. “Hey Perfect.”

“Are you back with us?” Perfuma asks, “what do you think of Horde Prime?”

“Horde Prime can eat my ass,” Scorpia mutters, “I’m going to vaporize him if I get the chance.”

Tears begin rolling down Perfuma’s cheeks, and a smile spreads on her face.

Scorpia struggles to prop herself up on one elbow, and wipes Perfuma’s tear away with a gentle pincer tip.

“Don’t you _ever_ sacrifice yourself like that again,” Perfuma says.

Scorpia looks away. “Sorry.”

Perfuma lurches forward and pulls Scorpia into a long hug.

Regaining some of her strength, Scorpia pulls Perfuma bodily up onto the table, and into her lap, sitting up, and looking around.

“Adora, Entrapta,” she greets. “Good to see you again.”

“Good to have you back, soldier,” Adora says.

Scorpia just nods. “Where’s— where’s Catra? Did I hurt her?”

“No,” Catra says, from the shadow corner by the door. “I’m fine.”

Scorpia stiffens a bit as Catra approaches.

Catra takes a deep breath. “Scorpia, I’m sorry,” she says. “For what I made you do to Entrapta. There is no apology that can make up for it, and I am not ever going to expect you to forgive me for it. I’m also sorry for beating the tar out of you down there; but that had to be done.”

Scorpia looks down. “So, what, you’re on the side of good now?”

“Yeah, _late,_ ” Catra says. “I— I ended up kinda… Dying. It took Adora bringing me back to realize I needed to turn a new leaf — or even that I could. You can get the full story later over a beer — if you want to talk to me at all, that is.”

Scorpia looks at her. Then at Entrapta. “Did you forgive her?”

Entrapta looks at Scorpia. Then over at Hordak, still lying sedated under spell on the far bed. “Catra is working very hard to make up for the things she did,” she says. Then she looks over at Catra. “If she keeps it up, I think… I think that’ll be good enough. No matter what she did.”

Scorpia looks back at Catra, sanding next to Adora. She nods. “Thanks for getting me away from him,” she says. “Catra; for the sake of fairness I have to admit I wasn’t a very good girlfriend either, I… I went along with everything you said, and I know now that’s not the right thing to do.”

“Hey, you don’t have anything to apologize for,” Catra says. “I took advantage. And you have found someone who appreciates you, by the looks of it.”

Perfuma opens one eye to look at Catra.

“Hey, I’m saying it like it is, Green Thumbs; you two are made for each other.”

Perfuma looks up at Scorpia with dreamy eyes, and they share a long, soft kiss.

“Oh my god,” Catra mutters, looking away.

Adora, meanwhile looks at Catra, and

Scorpia looks back up at Catra. “I could say the same about you, Wildcat.”

“What?” Catra asks.

“Well, you and Adora—”

“Oh no, no-no, we’re not,” Catra stammers, and looks at Adora. “We’re _just_ friends.”

Something falters a little in Adora’s mind, and there’s a sudden tightness in her chest. “Just friends,” she concurs.


	7. Manumission, Part 4

Damara puts a hand on Entrapta’s shoulder, and Entrapta’s hand stops shaking.

She takes a deep breath. “Beginning termination procedure,” she says, and inserts the electrodes into Hordak’s nasal cavity, working off the view from an otoscope projected onto a screen.

The two electrodes makes contact with the implanted wasp inside, and the creature is subjected to a steady direct current, heating its vital organs to pasteurization temperature, killing it. “Termination complete.”

Next she brings the custom-built robotic surgery device down on its boom arm, and begins the complex work of dislodging the intra-cranial connection filaments, entering through the olfactory bulb.

Across the room, Adora and Catra sit.

“You know, I never actually met him, apart from the Gala,” Adora says quietly. “What’s he like?”

Catra shakes her head. “Polite.”

“Huh.”

“I hope we can get him back.”

Adora looks at her. “Really?”

“I just mean, he’s a pretty clever guy, right? And he knows Horde Prime probably better than anyone. We could use him.”

Adora nods.

“Also, Entrapta would be devastated if we can’t, and we need her too.”

“Aw,” Adora says, “you really _do_ care.”

“I owe her. I owe her a _lot._ ”

Entrapta draws back. “Bradycardia. Administering shock; stand clear.” She steps back and pushes a button on a small device, connected by a couple of wires to electrodes on Hordak’s chest. Hordak twitches.

“Heart rhythm normalized. Continuing.”

Both of them let out a sigh of relief.

“I… I’ve brought some people aboard,” Catra says. “You’re the captain and all, but I thought you might approve.”

“Who?”

“Mostly people we know. Sea Hawk and little ’Dora, Perfuma-Scorpia, Frosta, Cometa, Netossa, Melissa, your grandmother, my mom, Queen Angella…”

“I guess I’ll have to address everyone in the mess.”

“Also Shadow Weaver,” Catra admits.

Adora looks at Catra. “Why?!”

“Because she saved the world okay? When I brought Sparkle’s mom back, the portal was about to eat the planet. Again. But worse this time. And she sacrificed one of her eyes to close it. I don’t like it anymore than you, but she’s _useful,_ Adora, and we need every advantage we can.”

Adora nods. “All right. I… I agree, she is useful. And I’m still waiting for Prime to start making designs on the Heart of Etheria.”

Catra nods. Her tail swishes back and forth, as they watch the procedure.

“You kept the white tip?” Adora asks.

Catra runs her tail into her hand. “Yeah. You’re right, it is cute. I was also thinking I might grow my hair out.”

Adora blinks. “I mean, the short ’do is lovely on you, but you did look good with it longer too.”

Catra blushes. “Want me to try?”

“What?”

Catra takes off her forehead protector and whips her head around. In a flicker of shadow, her hair grows out to its old shoulder-blade length; though still dark as midnight rather than grey. She runs a hand through it getting the strands out of her face.

This time Adora blushes. “ _Oh._ ”

“You wouldn’t happen to have a spare hair tie, would you?”

Adora’s hand goes in the pocket of her bleached-white jacket and produces a small bleached-white hair elastic. Catra takes it, holds it in her teeth, and collects her voluminous hair in a ponytail, to match Adora’s.

Entrapta fishes the carcass of the wasp out, and discards it in a glass dish. “No brain wave activity, as expected. Adora, please heal the patient.”

Adora gets up and walks over to the surgical table.

Hordak lies there; alien skin coloration in whites and dark greys; subtle surgical scars criss-crossing his tall and muscular body.

But very much just man. His expression is peaceful.

There’s a knock on the infirmary door. Catra gets up and opens, revealing Wrodak. “I heard you were freeing brother Hordak,” he says. “Might I— Might I participate?”

Entrapta nods.

Wrodak steps in, wearing pink as always, and the door slides closed behind him.

Adora looks back down at Hordak, and lays a hand on his forehead. She closes her eyes and thinks of Catra.

 _Her_ Catra. Wonderful, beautiful Catra. Every bit as thoughtful and kind as Adora had hoped — though she doesn’t like to show it. How happy Adora is to just have her around, even if… Even if she has these feelings for her.

Even if she just wants to be friends. That will be enough for a lifetime.

Starlight blooms in the infirmary, and when it subsides, Hordak’s brain waves are back.

“Pushing stimulant,” Entrapta notes, emptying a syringe into Hordak’s IV channel.

Hordak gives a start. “Wh— Where am I?”

“Hor-hor, you’re safe,” Entrapta says.

Hordak sits up. “No. No-no, this is all _wrong,_ why?”

“Hor-hor,” Entrapta says.

Hordak looks directly at Entrapta with green faceted eyes. “ _You!_ You did this to me!” He pivots and points an accusing clawed finger at Adora. “You _monsters,_ I was _back!_ I had finally gotten to bask in the light of Horde Prime as was my Birthright! And _you took that away from me!_ ”

He rolls off the table onto unsteady feet. “You _heathens!_ Horde Prime will hear of this transgression against his brother! I will _not_ stand for this! And _you—_ ” he points at Entrapta “— you selfish _harlot!_ I was _happy!_ After all these years on that _miserable backwater_ planet you call _home._ ”

There’s tears in his eyes. “How _could_ you?!” he screams.

“Hordak,” Adora says, hand outstretched, stepping forward.

Hordak scampers back, grabbing a scalpel from a tray of surgical tools, and pointing it at Adora. “Stay away from me! You light is _false!_ The only _true_ light is that of Horde Prime!”

There’s a hand on Adora’s shoulder, and she looks to its owner, seeing Wrodak.

“Let me,” he says.

Adora steps back.

Hordak backs further into a corner.

“Put the knife down, brother,” Wrodak says.

“Stay away from me, you _traitor._ ”

Wrodak moves.

Hordak swipes at him, but Wrodak grabs his wrist, and slams Hordak’s hand against the wall, causing him to drop the scalpel. Then he lets go, and Hordak stumbles back, clutching his hand.

“What has Horde Prime ever done for you?” Wrodak ask.

“What are you playing?” Hordak asks back.

“It’s a simple question.”

“He has done _everything_ for me. I wouldn’t _exist_ without him! He _loves_ me!”

Wrodak steps closer. “Name _three_ times he ever stepped out of his way and did something for _you_ because of his love. Please.”

Hordak searches for a concrete example for but a moment. “No! You are playing tricks on me! This is some ploy to sow doubts; but not in me! I am _faithful!_ ”

Wrodak grabs Hordak by the shoulders and shoves him against the wall. “What happened to you?!” Wrodak says firmly. “You were _born,_ man! And then because of what you _had no control over_ he _threw you out like trash!_ Are you trash?! Is that what you are?”

“No! I am a loyal and valuable servant!”

“Then why did he throw you out?!” Wrodak yells. “And then you ended up on Etheria, and what did you do?! You built an _empire!_ The greatest empire that world had ever seen! You did that! Do you hear me?! And you did it while deathly ill!”

“I built it in Prime’s name!”

“To damnation with Prime!” Wrodak yells. “That man _never_ cared for you, he _never_ loved you, he _punished you for having a name!_ Why did you take a name?! Tell me?!”

“Because those savages don’t take you seriously without one! I had to!”

“So do you agree Prime punished you for something you _had_ to do, just to survive?”

“Yes!”

“Is that just?!”

Hordak says nothing.

“Is it!? Is it just?!”

“Prime is the source of all justice!”

“ _Don’t give me a fucking line, brother! Is. It. Just?!_ ” Wrodak yells. “ _You know right from wrong! Tell me!_ ”

“ _No!_ ”

“And that’s because Prime doesn’t love you, brother,” Wrodak says, leaning in. “He doesn’t hate you either. He. Doesn’t. Care. About. You. Never had. Never will. All he cares about is _himself._ ”

“That’s… That can’t be true— I—”

Wrodak lets go, and Hordak slumps against the wall. “But do you know what, brother?” Wrodak says.

Hordak looks up at him.

“ _I_ care about you. Lady Entrapta cares about you. Sister Catra and sister Adora, in their own way, as well. There are people who love you. And _Prime_ made you let them down.”

Hordak slides down, against the wall, until he sits on the floor. He pulls his legs up under him, and starts crying.

Wrodak steps back.

Entrapta comes running, lands next to him, and Hordak pulls her into a hug.

* * *

They walk together to the mess.

“Is he going to be okay?” Adora asks Damara.

Damara shakes her head. “He’ll need time. Just like Wrodak did. But much more of it.”

“Why did you say those things to him?” Catra asks Wrodak.

“It’s… Were I in his stead, it is what I would want someone to tell me. My own turn from Prime was less — I was less involved. Fresher, more impressionable. I can only guess what all that time apart from Prime yet obsessed with returning would have done to him.”

“I’ll work with him,” Damara adds. “He needs a lot of help.”

“So,” Adora says to Catra. “Two down, five to go?”

* * *

“This is rather a lot more than what you mentioned,” Adora says quietly to Catra.

“Hey, it’s just until they put some buildings down for people to live in,” Catra says. “Lonnie says it should only be a few days. And I _did_ ask the quartermaster for permission.”

Seated in the mess is… Everyone. 

Wrodak heads directly into the kitchen where Glimmer and Clawdia are already at work; there’s an incredible amount of cooking to be done for over thirty people.

Adora walks up to one end of the mess hall. She doesn’t need a podium. At all.

“Hello, everyone,” she says.

Immediately the room falls silent.

“I guess introductions; for those of you who might need it.” She looks around at the room; there is nothing but people who know her personally. “Welcome aboard the Swift Wind, I’m your Captain. That means I have the final world in what goes on inside these hulls, and where we go. I _really_ hope nobody has a problem with that. That would be _awkward._ ”

There’s a few chuckles.

“If you have questions that nobody else can answer, you direct them to me; if I am unavailable or on ground, the final word belongs to our quartermaster, Damara.”

Damara levitates a few feet into the air, to make herself known.

“The core crew furthermore consists of our pilot, Bow, our chief stewardess, Glimmer, our analyst and armourer, Catra, and our chief engineer and physician Entrapta who is in the infirmary tending to a patient.”

Adora points out Wrodak in the kitchen. “As of a few hours ago, we have not one but two liberated Horde clones among the crew. That’s Wrodak in the kitchen. Both of them should be shown the same respect and kindness as everyone might be deserving of; our enemy is Horde Prime, not the poor souls he forces his will on; I hope that is _very_ clear.”

Adora looks around at the audience. “I think that concludes immediate orientation. I run this ship with little in the way of strict hierarchy; but I still expect orderly conduct and cleanliness from the lot of you. Swift Wind will likely serve as a mobile deployment platform, so if any of you are not comfortable with flying hither and yon, you come say it and we’ll set you off wherever you might want to go.”

“O captain, my captain?” Catra asks.

“What is it, Catra?” Adora asks

“What about some news?” Catra says with a sly smile.

Adora nods.

“This morning we flew a mission to attempt to liberate some of our friends from Horde Prime’s grasp, rescuing them directly from the Velvet Glove. As a crew, we have some experience with that, believe it or not. We managed to get Chancellor Hordak, and he is expected to make a full recovery sometime soon; in my estimation, the resistance could benefit greatly from the mind that created the terrestrial Horde empire.”

There’s some scattered applause.

“I’ll also apologize for not being available to thwart the attack on Refuge II; I suffered a wound when I served as a distraction for the boarding party. And that’s the bad news: more and more it looks as if there’s nothing we can really do about Horde Prime’s space fleet at the moment. I took them on, wielding the pinnacle of She-Ra’s power, and I didn’t even make a dent: two, maybe three hundred kills. Damara, what’s the estimate now?”

“Twenty-five thousand craft and climbing. I predict we’ll end up with almost a million enemy craft in the system by the end of deployment in about a month’s time.”

Catra raises a hand.

“Catra?” Adora asks.

“To be fair, you took them on riding a giant bird, and throwing _spears._ Three hundred kills is a _lot._ ”

Adora nods. “Thank you for the vote of confidence, Catra.” She looks over the crowd. “That we are powerless against the Horde forces patrolling the heavens does not mean this war is lost. For now, we, the Starlight Brigade, are going to rescue Spinnerella, Mermista, Huntara, Meteora, and Micah. Then with the full power of the Runestones, we will figure out how to hit Prime where it hurts.”

That gets her a round of applause.

But then the kitchen team bring out the food, and gets an even bigger applause.

Adora takes a seat in a separate hover chair at the end of the ‘command’ table, so to speak. Catra sits at her right; and around it sits Lonnie, Netossa, Sea Hawk, Damara hover-sitting at the other end, then Peekablue, Asterion, and Glimmer.

The meal is a bisque — vegetarian and shellfish — with freshly baked bread.

“What’s next?” Adora asks.

“Horde Prime is likely going to be protective of his assets,” Peekablue begins. “We haven’t seen him deploy off-world magic, but to assume he has none such to bring to bear is folly. I _know_ that Spinnerella is in the Candilan capital, and I am reasonably certain the same is true of our other quarries; there they can be protected by the synergy of the Stone Heart and the Flame Core’s powers.”

“That’s what I would do in his position,” Catra agrees. “Losing Scorpia has lost him the only ARW-resistant wielder in the world, and probably the single most powerful one too.”

“Uh, so,” Glimmer says, “Shadow Weaver reached out to me. She had troubling news: she thinks another Spell of Obtainment has been cast; she thinks my dad did it.”

“Troubling news indeed, he must have reasoned his abilities were insufficient after facing Catra,” Peekablue says.

Asterion snorts. “It sounds like we are are planning an operation Candilan soil. I cannot say I am enthused about returning there.”

Glimmer puts a hand on his enormous arm.

“There is something you must know about Meteora,” he says. He looks over his shoulder to where Cometa is sitting by the end of a table in the other end of the mess. Peftasteri sits next to her, at the end of the table in a hover chair. As Asterion’s gaze lingers, Meteora shapes her sister’s metal spoon into a wide straw — her hands are still too unsteady to eat with cutlery.

“This is something her sisters will never admit, but which I have seen with my own eyes. Though the Usurper Queen presents at all times a pleasant and cordial exterior, this is mere facade. I chose to believe her actions against my wife were not the result of Prime’s conditioning.”

“You’re right,” Catra says. “He doesn’t _make_ you do anything you don’t want; he just makes you pursue his ultimate goals in your own way, on your own premises; changes your loyalties.”

Asterion nods. "And yet, Prime allowed her to drop the pretense. She took _pleasure_ in violently stripping power away from her only kin. Since then, I hear her cruelty has only reached new heights; which frightens me. I have seen the way she treats servants and lesser nobility she deems beneath her.

"Once in her youth she even tried to leverage her gender and age to pressure me into keeping a secret. I thought then that a good beating would put a stop to it, but I only made it worse.

“There is a sickness in her mind; one which I fear no amount of magic from the two of you —” he nods to Adora and Catra “— can ever cure. And if you do, I fear she may not be able to live with what she has done.”

“So you’re saying we might have to kill her,” Adora says.

Asterion nods. “It will devastate my wife and our dear sister; if any way presents itself to avoid it, I would prefer that instead.”

Adora nods. “We’re going to need to gather intel and make a plan of action.”

“Let’s not forget that we’re facing a real triple-threat here,” Catra says. “They have Spinnerella; which means they have at least a fragment of the Hyperlens’ power. Any plan we make which can be compromised by enemy foreknowledge, we must be prepared to abandon; and that’s only the second. The third is the wasps.”

“Sweet Bee is effective at repelling them,” Peekablue says, “but in a direct confrontation with either Spinnerella or Mermista, she doesn’t stand a chance.”

“I think rather than dividing our powers and attempt to capture all of them at the same time,” Catra says, “we should make an order of neutralization and then deploy Adora and myself sequentially as force multipliers, while any other deployed field assets serve only to impede and delay the primary threats.”

“I might be able to help with that,” Netossa says. “Over the years I have been compiling the weaknesses inherent to every Runestone power, as well as a dossier of counter-stratagems against key threats.”

* * *

Netossa takes the floor in the control center. “Every Runestone power manifests itself differently, in terms of subjective experience and consequence of overuse.”

The Runestone Wielders in the room look around at each other. This is not an oft-discussed topic.

"With myself, summoning tethers is an extension of… ‘reaching out and touching.’ That sounds strange to you, but I’m sure you would be able to describe each your own power in this kind of poetic terms, which will make perfect sense to yourself but be baffling nonsense to everyone else.

“As for the consequence of over-use, if I push myself, my tethers begin suffusing my veins and obstruct blood flow, especially to my hands and arms. I once almost lost a hand to this strangulation effect after a protracted pursuit. This also means that if for whatever reason my hands are impeded — especially constriction of blood flow — my powers are similarly impeded. A tight strap around my upper arm is enough to reduce my power measurably.”

She holds out an arm, and pokes her poofy sleeve. “Hence the lack of constricting upper-body clothing, and my near obsession with properly fitted armor.”

Glimmer raises a hand.

“Perhaps you’d like to share about your own powers?”

“Headaches,” Glimmer says, “whenever I get headaches, I can barely use my power — that’s also what happens if I over-use.”

“Same with me,” Angella adds, “when I still had the Moonstone, though I never mastered teleportation.”

Netossa nods approvingly. “And how is it to use your power?”

“I imagine that the spaces things occupy just exchange places, and then it happens,” Glimmer says.

Netossa looks around the room. “I can tell you that my wife uses her hearing somehow; she becomes almost deaf if she overdoes it.”

Perfuma raises a hand. “I get… Hungry.”

Indeed, she had two servings of bisque, and half a loaf of bread in the mess; a lot for someone of such a slight build.

“I don’t know mine,” Scorpia says. “I haven’t come close to my limit yet.”

“I go partially blind,” Frosta says.

“I become over-sensitive,” Peekablue says, “to everything. Light, sound, smells, even touch… My wife becomes unable to exist ‘in the moment,’ in a mental capacity; she becomes distractible and distanced, and in extreme cases, completely unresponsive.”

“According to the royal physicians, we Flame Core wielders become anemic,” Cometa says. “I’m not sure how that is relevant if we’d have to _bleed_ my sister to get anywhere.”

“I might be able to help with that,” Glimmer says.

Then all eyes turn to Sea Hawk.

“Ah,” he says. “Mermista becomes dehydrated. Once on an adventure together, she got a case of thirst-induced delirium worse than I have ever seen in a shipwrecked sailor.”

Netossa purses her lips, and looks over the group. “Scorpia, your power is to do with lightning.”

“Um, yes?”

“Does that include thunderclaps?”

Scorpia grins. “I’d demonstrate, but I might hurt people’s hearing; yes.”

“One problem,” Glimmer says. “When we faced her on the ship, she deflected my lightning spell; and I saw how she did it. Spinnerella can make regions as devoid of air as the void of space — no sound can travel there.”

“We’ll workshop that in a smaller team,” Netossa says. “As for Mermista; I think Frosta might be our best bet. You can sweat her, right?”

“And if she goes to get a drink, I can boil the water in her cup too,” Frosta says, grinning deviously.

“That leaves Huntara; who I have trained myself. What I observed is that she absolutely requires solid ground under her feet for her power to work; and when we pushed her limits, her legs began to give out.”

Catra snickers.

Netossa turns to her. “What?”

“Rip off her legs; got it,” Catra says with a shit-eating grin. “Not like that doesn’t work for anyone else—”

Adora smacks the back of her head.

“I mean, we do have a healer with a record of restoring amputated limbs,” Netossa says, looking at Adora. “But let’s try not to maim our friends too badly.”

* * *

Lonnie approaches Adora as dinner breaks up. She’s reading something from her communicator. “I might be able to relieve you of the noncombatants in as little as four hours. We’ve already made accommodations for about half of the evacuees.”

Adora blinks. “That’s _fast,_ how did you manage that?”

“First-Ones’ construction technology; I don’t know if you noticed but the buildings in Refuge II weren’t made from stone. It’s this kind of hardening mineral foam reinforced with fibre. With some nano-carbon struts to support the roofs, it takes hours for a team of skilled workers to construct a five-storey building. We’re building in a few other prospective caves and caverns — some of them natural, others part of the First-Ones’ cthonic infrastructure.”

“That’s amazing,” Adora says.

“I’m just a security coordinator,” Lonnie says. “It’s Kyle and Rogelio’s team who deserve the credit for the tech.”

“How have you three been holding up?”

“We’re good. We’re in a good place, together.” She puts the communicator in her pocket. “I love them to bits.”

Adora smiles, looking askance at her. “I always though you were into women.”

Lonnie shrugs. “I like everybody. Kyle and Rogelio just happen to be ‘The Two’ for me.”

“I’m happy for you.”

* * *

Catra opens the doors to the armoury, stalks inside in the dimmed lights, and clears a workbench. Then she begins unloading the guns she stole from the Velvet Glove.

There is nothing more ironic than using the man’s own weapons against him. And besides, it’s decent craftsmanship. Her bag of tricks is beginning to house a small arsenal; and an arsenal needs maintenance.

“Catra.”

A raspy voice. Catra spins around to see Hordak standing there in the door. He looks… Diminished. His clothes are plain — a coverall not unlike the ones Entrapta wears.

“Hordak,” she greets.

“Permission to enter the armoury?”

“If you didn’t have permission, I’d tell you to leave,” Catra says.

Hordak steps in, looking around.

Catra turns to him. With her backhand she flicks the lights on behind him from across the room. “Why are you here? Should you even be up and about?”

Entrapta has requisitioned the last of the couple’s suites for Hordak and herself.

“Entrapta is busy. I… I couldn’t stay in that room anymore.” He says and hugs himself.

Catra blinks. “You’re lonely, and you decided to seek out a familiar face.”

Gone is the confident ruler of a nation, gone is the rage and the hurt. All that is left is regret and uncertainty.

“I don’t need your pity, Catra.”

Catra barks out a laugh. “You’re alive because of it. _I’m_ alive because of Adora’s pity. Without pity, we’d both have died a long time ago. No, you have my pity, because you deserve it, and because you used to pity me, once, if I’m not mistaken; and I’ve come to learn it’s not such a bad thing to be pitied. Come over here.”

Hordak shuffles over. They’re almost the same height. No longer does he loom over her. “You shouldn’t be here. And by ‘here’ I mean in the fucking armoury. I know what can happen when you’re in a low place and have access to firearms, and it _isn’t_ pretty.”

He looks away.

Catra sighs and rubs the bridge of her nose. “Listen; go talk to Damara. And if she decides the best thing for you right now is to play with guns, I’ll find something for you to do. Otherwise, if you _really_ want to help, the best thing you can do is _get better._ ”

He doesn’t say anything.

“Hordak, I’m going to punch you in the face.”

“What?”

Catra punches him in the face.

He stumbles and steadies himself on the workbench. In a snarl, he advances and hits her right back, a strong right hook. Catra’s head snaps to the side from the force of the blow.

She turns back to look at him. “Good.”

“ _Good?!_ ” Hordak growls.

“You hit back. Self-preservation.”

Hordak sputters. “Have you gone _insane?!_ ”

Catra starts laughing. She puts a hand on his shoulder, to steady herself. Hordak stands by, uncertain how to react. Finally her laughter subsides, and she wipes one eye.

“Hordak, I’m on the side fighting Horde Prime, Emperor of the Galaxy, and we have _one_ spaceship that doesn’t even have a main cannon. How sane can I _be?_ ”

Catra ruffles his hair, in mock affection, and with a touch of darkness restores the white hair to its former dark hue.

He bares his teeth and looks away. She grabs his face with both hands and rubs her thumbs against his eyes, turning the sickly green of Prime’s influence to intimidating red.

Hordak swipes her arms aside. “I do _not_ appreciate this level of physical intimacy from you.”

Catra pulls a mirror from her bag of tricks and tosses it to him. “Didn’t do it because I like you, don’t worry. Just thought you needed a makeover to get you started on the right foot.”

He looks at himself, and Catra manages to see the surprise in the twitch of his pointed ears.

“Get better,” she says. “If not for yourself then for her. I certainly can’t do it for you, but now you’re at least starting on the right foot.”

* * *

The Swift Wind has emptied some, and they are making the last preparations for the mission.

Glory is lying there in the cargo hold, willingly subjecting themselves to a grooming session which Starla has roped Cometa into helping with.

Catra stands some distance away, watching.

“Penny for your thoughts?” Adora asks, startling her some.

“I’m just thinking, we can’t have you tied up keeping the skies clear; not the whole mission. You and I _need_ to be mobile between the field teams.”

“Yeah.”

Catra looks at Parabell and Stella Nova hovering, one sheathed in the other, next to Adora. She has made some clothes to replace the colors starlight burnt away. Her forehead protector has also grown wings, and the metal is different; it started out as brass, and was burnt to white silver; now it is white gold. Catra realizes it’s Halcyon in the form of a diadem, and that she has been checking Adora out.

“Let’s make a budget She-Ra,” Catra says

“What?”

“C’mon, it’ll be fun.”

Catra trots over to Glory’s wing, splayed over the floor, where Starla is showing Cometa proper comb technique.

“Starla, Cometa,” Catra says, “good to see you are getting along.”

“We’re not—” Starla says, slightly exasperated. “What can we do for the two of you?”

Catra produces Cometa’s shield. “Princess, I need a patch job.” There’s a glob of epoxy residue where the glued-on steel patch were.

Cometa folds up the sleeves of her grey coverall. From her belt she produces a knife and scrapes the epoxy resin off. “Why didn’t you weld it?”

“That would have made it rather permanent, wouldn’t it?” Catra says. “Didn’t want to mar the finish.”

Cometa runs a hand over the bullet hole, and it closes itself. There’s no material missing; it’s just a punched hole and deformation. Unlike Stella Nova, there’s no wood on the back, to make it lighter.

Cometa hands it back to Catra. “Nah, give it to Starla.”

Hesitating, Cometa hands the shield to Starla, who tries it on. Without even being asked, Cometa pushes the shield out to inspect the strap placement, and moves the rivets slightly with her finger, as if they were mobile all along.

“Adora, if you will? Like you did with Stella Nova back then.”

Adora steps up to Starla, and lays a hand on the shield. She closes her eyes, and starlight flows from her into the shield. A _tremendous_ amount of starlight. The eight-pointed star motif on the shield begins glowing.

“Name it,” Adora says, still channelling.

“What?”

“Name the shield.”

Starla wracks her brain for a moment. “Sirius. I name it Sirius.”

Adora retracts her hand. The glow fades.

“Was something supposed to happen?” Cometa asks.

“I don’t know,” Adora says.

Catra steps forward, pulls the shield in front of Starla, and draws Bane. She puts the point against the spot on the shield that once had the bullet hole.

  
_You failed to protect your wielder once. Don’t let it happen again._   


Then she swaps Bane for a pistol, and points it at Starla’s forehead.

The shield grows eight wings made of light, which wrap around Starla.

Catra dismisses the gun — which was never even loaded — and pumps her fist triumphantly. “It worked!”

“Holy shit!” Starla exclaims.

Catra pats Cometa on the shoulder. “That’s _two_ magic shields to your name! Let’s do her sword, Adora.”

Adora looks at the saber at Starla’s hip. “I mean, I can just give her Parabell; in javelin form it could probably do some damage to a Horde interceptor even if _I_ am not the one throwing it.”

“Fine,” Catra says. “Then let _me_ do her sword. I mean, if I may, Starla.”

Starla draws the sabre, and presents the hilt to Catra. Catra holds it out, resting the blade in her other hand, and calls on her darkness.

Glory stirs a bit, and looks directly at her.

Then, holding it by the blade still, she puts the hilt in Starla’s hand. “Name it. Something cool, is I recommend.”

“Second.”

“Really?”

“It’s what’s _after Prime._ You know, homes in when thrown and all.”

Catra grins. “Clever. I like it.”

She lets go, and the darkness flickers in the already blue-gray rune-inlaid blade.

Adora summons a Parabell blade and grows it into a lance: the same size she normally hurls at spacecraft, definitely a weapon to be used from the back of Glory, not on foot. She hands it to Starla, who sheathes Second to take it.

“I’m like some hero of legend now,” Starla says.

“You look the part too,” Cometa adds. “But you should test that blade out before you go into battle.”

* * *

The Swift Wind, as invisible as its namesake, takes off towards Candila.

It’s a line-up of the best and brightest the resistance has to offer.

Team ‘Unsanitary’ is Sweet Bee, Peekablue, Double Trouble, and Catra.

Team ‘Clear Skies’ consists of Starla and Adora on Glory.

Team ‘Spin’ consists of Netossa, of course, aided by Scorpia and Glimmer.

Team ‘Wet’ consists of Frosta, assisted by Bow, Juliet, and a host of custom drones made by Entrapta and under Damara’s control.

Team ‘Dark’ consists of Castaspella, Shadow Weaver, and Angella.

Team ‘Ground’ consists of Cometa, Perfuma, and against all advice, Melissa.

Team ‘Base’ is Entrapta, Damara, Wrodak, and Asterion, supplying the rest of them with coordination and intel, and standing by to receive the captives.

There’s not enough guns and armor in the armoury for all of them.


	8. Manumission, Part 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cw: battle injuries, brainwashing

Catra and Cometa see them off.

“Don’t die out there, Starla,” Cometa says.

Starla gives her a salute from the rear position on the saddle, sitting reverse behind a double Toha cannon. “I won’t! Good luck with your sister.”

“Don’t make me come restore your eyesight again,” Catra calls after Adora, who sits in the front seat.

Then the portal opens ahead of them with a rush of wind, and Glory kicks off hard, diving into the open sky; three heavy drones follow them for support.

“Multiple contacts,” Adora says, consulting the heads-up display Halcyon is presenting her with.

“On it,” Starla says.

The aerial presence above the Red City is massive. And not only is it dropships, but also fighter jets and drone swarms.

Their three support drones veer off into a defensive formation behind them.

Starla de-couples the two barrels, letting them aim independently, and engages the aim-assist. Then she swivels the weapon towards a nearby swarm of drones which is beginning to move towards them. She squeezes both spade-grip triggers and the twin guns start their percussive part; each beam of destructive energy unerringly sending a drone plummeting below.

Adora braces against the saddle with her knee, and throws the first javelin at a dropship.

“We’ve got incoming jets,” Starla says.

“Let the drones deal with the drones,” Adora says. “Take them out.”

An air-to-air missile closes in on them and explodes harmlessly against Stella Nova’s protection.

“Ha-ha! _Come get some!_ ” Starla yells, turning both barrels on the tiny dots in the distance and opening fire.

* * *

Catra steps out of the invisible portal, directly onto the streets of the Red City. Under her cloak is Peekablue, Double Trouble, Sweet Bee, Castaspella, Shadow Weaver, and Angella; all of them in armor. Catra has several dozen ‘beacons’ in her bag of tricks, steel spikes with sorcerous engravings that serve a dual purpose: to extend Sweet Bee’s sphere of influence, and to cast a selective teleportation-suppression spell using the Moonstone’s power.

Above them the first explosions can be heard in the skies.

Catra flips a coin a few times then directs them wordlessly to a large red brick building, down the alley next to it, and into a basement access. She holds the door open while the others head down the stairs. Before she closes it, Sweet Bee opens one of the two crates she’s carrying, releasing a swarm of dragonflies that dart out past Catra.

The room is damp and poorly lit, but unoccupied and not documented on official records.

Catra counts the exits and produces as many autonomous point-defense machine guns in suitcases. Double Trouble and Peekablue rush to set them up.

“Perimeter secure,” Sweet Bee says.

Catra reaches out with Bad News; bridging her control of the small portal device into the wider portal device network for extra range. “Deploying beacons,” she says, and thirty grapefruit-sized portals open in the air in front of her. Thirty of the beacon spears emerge from darkness in mid air, become cloaked in darkness, and fall through as they turn invisible. They land miles away in a circle around the entire city, burying themselves in soft soil.

Then she takes a single one out, and drives it into the floor with a bare hand. “You’re on,” she says to the others.

Castaspella, Shadow Weaver, and Angella join hands around the beacon spear, and begin a complex chant; a rune circle appears in mid air, surrounding the beacon.

Five minutes later, the spell is complete.

“My turn,” Sweet Bee says, and a single dragonfly lands on the beacon. “There. I have control.”

“Good,” Catra says. “You three, with me,” she says to Castaspella, Angella, and Shadow Weaver.

They join hands once more, making a circle with Catra, and she puts them under cloak again.

“This will last you a few minutes. Move fast, stay low.”

Angella takes out a tracker pad, its spell tuned to Micah by two drops of blood — one from Glimmer, one from Castaspella. “Thank you, Catra. Let’s go, girls.” She draws a Yala-Zev from her hip holster one-handed and unfolds the stock by a flick of the wrist. Castaspella takes her battle-staff from her back, while Shadow Weaver draws a simple wand of whisperoak.

Double Trouble holds the door open for them, and Peekablue begins unpacking an entire workstation of hologram projectors, feeds linked to the Swift Wind.

* * *

“ _I’m seeing what you’re seeing,_ ” Peekablue says, “ _Unsantized in place, Dark has just moved out, Catra is avaiable for assist._ ”

“We read you loud and clear, Prince,” Asterion says. The hover chairs in the control center are _almost_ too small for him.

“Clear Skies are making progress,” Wrodak notes. “Team Spin, you are clear to go.”

* * *

Glimmer double checks their misdirection wards, then grabs Netossa and Scorpia by their shoulders and blinks them into the sky.

Netossa weaves fabric wing under her arms and between her legs; Glimmer pulls her wings close, diving like a falcon; and Scorpia calls forth a staggering electric potential, coasting along on a wind of ionized gasses.

Scorpia’s suit has no active systems: delicate electronics and crystals don’t agree with lightning strikes; her comms is a simple voice-transfer spell linked back to speakers and a microphone on the Swift Wind.

The tracking spell they are using is tuned to Netossa’s blood: Spinnerella carries their unborn child.

“ _Peekablue, we need that counter,_ ” Netossa says.

“ _Code Alpha. Proceed as you wish,_ ” Peekablue says smoothly over their comms.

“ _She’s in the east wing of the palace,_ ” Netossa says. “ _That’s going to take us uncomfortably close to Meteora and Huntara, but as long as we remain airborne, we should be fine. Scorpia, I’ll need you to call down a lightning strike. A big one. Hit the roof over at the gable end._ ”

“ _Can do,_ ” Scorpia replies.

" _Glimmer, put a few grenades on the ground floor. We need to spook her._ ’

They close in, unaccosted by drones and fighter jets which are all busy getting shot out of the sky by Team Clear Skies.

Scorpia blasts up higher. “ _Look away!_ ” From her glowing form comes a two second long lightning bolt, striking the top of the bell-gable. Brickwork explodes and the heavy bronze bells melt under the heat.

Just as it ends, Glimmer puts her hands on her bandoleer, blinking five grenades away, leaving behind the pins. Seconds later, all the windows on the ground floor blow out.

Netossa throws a tether skyward to brake.

Glimmer spreads her wings and rides the momentum of the dive to circle around the back.

Tense seconds pass.

“ _She’s staying put,_ ” Netossa says, “ _I’ll ferret her out._ ”

She throws two tethers down onto the facade and rockets downwards towards one of the large windows.

Yet more tense seconds pass, and then a window on the back bursts open and Spinnerella launches into the air.

“ _Earplugs!_ ” Netossa says.

Glimmer engages the enhancement in her visor, as she coasts by, unnoticed by Spinnerella who is already accelerating skyward. In her mind’s eye she feels the dense gel, and then with a blink, it lands in her palm.

In the distance Spinnerella swiftly assesses the situation, and digs through a pocket for another earplug.

Glimmer inspects the thing in her palm. It’s no mere earplug — it has a button. “Scorpia, disrupt their comms, Spinnerella has a radio!”

Scorpia lets out a wave of concentrated radiation, blanketing the entire caste in high enough in power to blow every transmitter inside. “ _Done!_ ”

Spinnerella flinches and holds her ears. She nearly drops out of the sky, as she pulls her earplugs out.

“ _That’s not a transmitter, it’s an electronic hearing protection device,_ ” Entrapta notes. “ _It blocks loud noises but lets pass quiet ones._ ”

Spinnerella spins a few times, scanning the skies. Then she turns and begins accelerating directly away from the palace, northbound.

“ _She’s making an escape!_ ” Netossa yells, and starts pulling herself forward on tethers anchored on huge canopy-like nets, catching air.

“I’ll pursue but I can’t safely intercept her,” Glimmer notes.

“ _I can,_ ” Scorpia says. “ _Netossa, throw me a line!_ ”

Netossa casts a hundred-foot-long tether in Scorpia’s direction, and Scorpia swoops in to catch it and wraps it around her tail. “ _Han on!_ ” The she boosts after Spinnerella on jets of plasma.

Glimmer blinks after them.

* * *

“ _That’s the last of the larger craft in the immediate area,_ ” Damara says in Adora’s earpiece. “ _Team Spin seems to have it well in hand, but we need to bring her in fast._ ”

Around them more drones begin emerging from portals, hunting down their Horde counterparts.

“Starla, are you ready?” Adora asks.

“As ready as I am ever going to be,” Starla says.

Adora rolls off the side of the saddle, hanging on by one hand and putting a foot on the heavy strap keeping the seats attached to Glory’s back. Starla locks the barrels of the cannon together, locks traverse and elevation, and unclasps the heavy weapon from its attachment point.

With Adora’s help, she repositions the cannon to face forwards, attached ahead of the front seat, and unlocks traverse and elevation.

That done, she grabs Sirius from her back, and gingerly releases the shield. It glides along on the wind, sprouts its translucent wings and follows Glory along in flight, gently rotating. The lance is attached to the side of the saddle, within easy reach, and Second sits in Starla’s belt, ready to be drawn and thrown.

What Catra’s darkness has done to the ancestral blade is making it incapable of missing, and able to cut virtually anything.

“Good hunting!” Adora says, and lets go.

The wind picks her up immediately, as Glory flies on ahead.

Then Adora channels starlight into hands and feet, and expels it. She has been squeezing all the practice she could in, to train this: unassisted flight. Faster than riding Stella Nova by a wide margin, and even faster than surfing on Parabell — a scary prospect, even if she broadens the blade. It does use more starlight, and now Adora knows there’s a limit.

Her visor points her in the direction of Team Spin, who are pursuing Spinnerella well out of the patrolled perimeter. Fighter jets and drones are closing in on them.

Adora accelerates to trans-sonic velocity, and Stella Nova’s silk wraps itself around her protects her as she goes supersonic.

* * *

“ _Spinnerella has no comms, you are clear to engage,_ ” Entrapta says.

“Frosta, you’re up,” Bow says, looking over the lip of the flat roof he is hiding on, using a mirror.

Down in the middle of the street, surrounded by a gelatinous mass of water, is Mermista, ripping cobblestones out of the street, and futilely blasting them skyward at Glory passing overhead with the sharp crack of supersonic projectiles. Half the street has been de-paved in this manner already, and the water is somehow clean, despite the filth of the gutters — the Red City like every other except Captial, has no sewer system.

Frosta peeks over the lop of her own roof across the street, and in an instant, the entire water mass begins crystallizing.

Mermista reacts with her trademark speed, immediately breaking up the crystals and churning the water hard enough to heat it enough to melt the ice. Then, she turns tail, and the gigantic mass of water retreats up the intact section street at the speed exceeding a crashing waterfall.

Chunks of ice form in the water and are promptly left behind.

“ _After her!_ ” Juliet yells, and from a few houses down the street she takes a few shots with her machine gun before pursuing.

Bow kicks off and skates across the roof, propelled by the beefy intentionally controlled reactionless thruster pack on his back. He leaps into the air and coasting over the alley.

He lands lightly on the springy skates on the next roof and races across that one too, in hot pursuit of their target. In flight, he loosens one of Adora’s arrows, and the golden shaft punches through the water mass down the street, only a few inches from Mermista.

“ _We’re not trying to kill her!_ ” Frosta chides.

“I wasn’t aiming for her!” Bow replies. The golden shaft flies back into his hand on his next leap. “Aren’t you supposed to give her heatstroke?!”

“ _I am! She’s cooling herself with the water!_ ” Across the street, Frosta catches up to him, gliding over an alley — her suit is not mere armor with externally mounted servos, but a real vehicle; she is no less graceful than he.

“Shit,” Bow says.

“ _All right, plan ‘B,’ we’re switching to suppressor projectors,_ ” Juliet says. They are all equipped with them, sleeker and more portable though they may be, the range is short and their target is very, _very_ fast on her feet.

Mermista turns a corner hard. Bow, Juliet, and Frosta follow on the rooftops, reaching a large plaza.

There’s over three hundred Horde clones there, and a large spread of water puddles and overflowing gutters. Bow manages to pick out Mermista’s turquoise hair in the crowd, before she throws her white hood up, blending in perfectly.

“Base, we’re going to need one of those assists!” Bow says. “And drone support, if you can spare it.”

“ _Rodger that,_ ” Catra answers smoothly.

* * *

They find him in the great Candilan royal library. A magnificent building, with the largest domed roof ever constructed — both because of the steel, but also because it is actually not a hemisphere. The visible hemispherical domes inside and outside are but facades, the true load-bearing dome hidden between is of a strange and secret curvature.

There’s a complement of Candilan guards stationed at the main entrance, and additional guards at every other venue of ingress.

Angella, Castaspella, and Shadow Weaver sneak around to a side-entrance, guarded by a pair of one Candilan guard, and a Horde clone.

“What now, Your Majesty?” Shadow Weaver asks, as Angella peeks around the corner, from an alley across the street.

Angella reaches out. Her grasp of the Moonstone’s power has always been hampered by her mental condition — her mind’s eye is blind. It is the reason she has never mastered Rune sorcery either.

But necessity is the mother of invention.

The hundred yards or so between them and the two guards contracts in a nauseating and impossible way to become more like ten feet. Angella leans out of cover and shoots them both with her sub-carbine.

“Go!” She says.

They cross the compressed space, Angella swoops down and grabs the two corpses, leveraging her angelic strength to throw them back in the alley they came from, and then space snaps back like a rubber-band. Nobody will notice a pair of corpses hundreds of feet from where they should be.

Castaspella steps forward, putting the butt end of her staff against the locked door they were guarding. “O, I bid thee, unlock, O lock,” she says, gesturing a little circle with her pinky, creating a small rune. There’s a click, and the door opens.

They enter into a supply room, full of clutter. Brooms, boxes, and stacks of books.

“This way,” Angella says, leading them through the door onto the library floor proper.

Book shelves twelve feet tall, row after row after row. Spiral staircases lead to the next floor up, and down the aisle, in the main chamber under the dome where the upper floor opens, is a raised podium, upon which sits Micah in plain view, at a centrally placed desk, reading.

Behind him sits inert a sphere of striated black-and-white marble, fitted with four grotesque steel limbs. Surrounding the podium stand Horde clone acolytes; at least thirty of them.

They hide behind a book case. Castaspella puts up a ward of silence.

“So, what do we do?” Castaspella asks. “I don’t exactly like our prospects in a direct confrontation — those clones are likely there for sacrifices to fuel dark magics.”

“Agreed,” Shadow Weaver says. “I feel it now, indubitably; he has cast the Spell of Obtainment. Successfully so, unlike myself back then.”

“I might be able to give him pause by my presence alone,” Angella says.

“Your Majesty; sister,” Castaspella says. “It is too dangerous.”

“He is my husband,” Angella counters. “I swore an oath to him; in prosperity as in adversity. Do you trust your own brother so little?”

“If I may,” Shadow Weaver says.

“You may,” Angella says.

“Face him,” she says, “distract him. I will engage. Casta, I am counting on you to intervene where you can.”

“Are you sure you can handle him?” Castaspella asks skeptically. “If he has an Obtainer as well?”

Shadow Weaver smirks — her visor is clear, and her horrific scars are plain to see. “He is a newborn babe; he has had what, hours, since Catra faced him on the Velvet Glove? I am thirty-five years his senior in that regard; or seven months, depending on how you count. Additionally I _taught_ him. If anyone has a chance in a sorcerer’s duel with him, it’s me.”

* * *

The three of them huddle in an alley, out of sight, while Melissa controls a walnut-sized spy-drone. She’s heavily armed, compared to the other two: Perfuma has a two Zev-pistols, a knife, and belt-pouches full of seeds; Cometa is carrying four rods of different alloy steels and a slug-throwing chemically-driven mechanical rifle made entirely of metal, even her hazard suit armor is made of metal alloy panelling.

“Okay, I have a view,” Melissa says.

Perfuma and Cometa both get an overlay in their visors.

What they glimpse of the throne room through the high windows, is what remains of the court — the fools that haven’t fled — and Meterora on the throne giving an audience to a team of armor-clad Horde clones. She lounges uncouthly in the seat, and in her hand rests a chain, which leads to a collar around Huntara’s neck.

“I— I don’t—” Cometa says. “Why is she—?”

“Seems your sister dear has reinstated slavery,” Melissa notes dryly.

“I don’t understand,” Cometa says.

“Your father abolished slavery in Candila, if memory serves,” Melissa says grimly. “Huntara is old enough to remember the time before. She fled to the Hordlands to escape it.”

“Oh, what has that creep done to my sister.”

“He hasn’t done _anything,_ ” Melissa says. “Whatever she does, it is either an order, or it is _her_ will; and I’m willing to bet on the latter based solely on the _panache_ of it.”

“Meteora would _never—_ ”

Melissa turns to face Cometa. “Are you _sure,_ girl? Because it looks like my _wife_ is in _chains_ in there.”

“This is not going to escalate into a conflict betweeen the two of you,” Perfuma states. “We have a mission: to observe and report. Base, can we get Asterion?”

“ _Team Ground, what can I assist you with?_ ” Asterion rumbles back.

“Brother,” Cometa says, “Meteora wouldn’t reinstate slavery would she? I’m sending you a picture; I can’t explain what she’s doing…”

There’s a pause.

“ _Shit._ ”

* * *

Spinnerella is buying time; that much is obvious. Scorpia is assailing her with thunderclaps, but she keeps forming sound-proof vacuum barriers to protect her hearing. Netossa’s attempts at snaring her with tethers are fruitless.

Blinking in grenades is out — too close and it’ll kill her, too far and Spinnerella can negate the shockwave with vacuum.

She’s buying time to let the Horde air superiority catch up. Wrodak is methodically informing Glimmer that more jets are peeling off from the main fight in the airspace above Candila, to pursue them.

The first one comes within fighting range, and Glimmer takes it upon herself to take it out.

The aircraft is a sleek, aerodynamic thing with back-swept wings; silver-grey on top and white on the belly. It veers from an oblique approach, turning its nose in the direction of Spinnerella and her opponents.

Glimmer casts the First Flame, and accelerates to match speed and direction with the plane, then blinks close.

Coming in from above and behind, she touches a grenade on her bandoleer, and disappears it. Moments later the left air-intake on the plane goes up in smoke, and the engine at its rear stars belching black smoke.

“ _Team Spin, do you need a hand?_ ”

“Adora?!” Glimmer says. “Thank goodness, yeah! We’ve got incoming.”

“ _Not if I can help it,_ ” Adora replies.

Glimmer turns to look towards the Red City, and sees explosions pepper the noonday sky, as Parabell no doubt slices through aircraft after aircraft.

Off to the side, a glowing point trailing light is rapidly approaching. Glimmer casts a directional light spell, sending bright purple flashes in Adora’s direction, and within seconds, the point resolves itself to a figure.

Adora slows some, as she passes by Glimmer. “ _Netossa, Scorpia, I’m going to try to ground her!_ ” Adora shouts, and blasts off in the direction of the fight, a mile distant. “ _Glimmer, get a suppressor!_ ”

Unfazed by the prospect of having the air pulled from her lungs, Adora flies directly at Spinnerella, and the two begin a fast-paced battle-dance not unlike raptor and sparrow.

Glimmer blinks back aboard the Swift Wind, grabs one of the suppressor projectors sitting on the floor in the cargo hold, and blinks back into the sky, managing to catch a glimpse through the magnification of her visor, of Adora grabbing onto Spinnerella’s sleeve.

And then the fight is over. Adora’s raw strength and invulnerability from her shield lets her overpower Spinnerella. There is a tether tied around her waist, and at the other end of that, Scorpia.

Scorpia drops like a rock, and there is nothing Spinnerella can do to prevent it. Her and Adora get yanked out of the sky like a sparrow tied to a ship’s anchor.

Scorpia makes ground, and Spinnerella is suspended above her like a kite. Glimmer blinks in, and switches on the suppressor, and as soon as Spinnerella gets in range of it, she drops. A cradle of tethers materializes itself to brake her and Adora’s fall.

“We’ve got Spinnerella,” Glimmer says, as she makes to land, keeping the projector at Spinnerella at all times.

They land in a field, between rows of tubers grown in mounds.

“ _No! Please! You can’t do this to me!_ ” Spinnerella screams.

“ _We’re not going to fucking hurt you, Spinnerella!_ ” Adora yells back.

Adora is sitting across Spinnerella’s chest. Scorpia is standing some distance away, looking thoroughly uncomfortable.

Netossa descends on a parachute of tether-weave, and hurries over to Spinnerella. “What’s going on?!” she asks.

Adora gestures to her cheek, where a red stripe. “She had a knife.”

“You’re going to brain-wash me!”

“We’re going to get that _fucking wasp_ out of your nose, you moron!” Adora yells back.

“Do you think I want to go back to worrying about defeating Prime?! I want a _future_ for my child! You’re _never_ going to win this war, do you understand?”

Netossa opens one of her belt pouches; which holds a foam cushion containing an injection pen.

“Please, ’Toss, don’t think of our child; join me instead,” Spinnerella pleads.

She kneels down by Spinnerella, and puts a firm hand on her wife’s head, turning it away both to get a view of her neck and to get the pleading eyes out of her sight, gingerly she places the injection pen against her jugular vein and pushes the button.

The sedative begins working within half a minute.

“Glimmer,” Netossa says. “Please take us back to the Swift Wind.”

Adora rises off Spinnerella, and Netossa takes her wife’s limp hand. Glimmer comes over, kneels down, touching them both, and the three of them vanish in a puff of light leaving Scorpia and Adora.

“That’s taken care of,” Scorpia says. “What now?”

Adora turns and looks back towards the Red City. “We need to get back; the others might need the extra firepower.”

Scorpia rolls her shoulders. “Just so you know, I was thinking of tackling her before you came; I just — wasn’t sure I could do it without hurting her.”

“Good call,” Adora says. “You didn’t know I was available for healing.”

“Let’s get going.” Electrical fields surround Scorpia, and a smell of ozone pervades the air as she readies to take off.

Adora winces. “I channeled a lot of power getting here. I don’t wanna turn blind again; you go on ahead, I’ll call for a portal.”

Scorpia powers down. “A portal is probably faster.”

A few quick commands in her contact lens interface, and a wormhole opens up to just outside the sixty-foot tall steel walls of the city. The nearest gate is two miles east.

“Wanna give me a boost?” Adora asks.

“If you have some rope, I can just tow you if you don’t mind dangling,” Scorpia suggests.

Adora calls on Halcyon on her brow to form itself into a golden rope… Then pauses to consider the fact that she’s an idiot. “Hold on, let me try something.” She closes her eyes for a moment, and asks for what she needs: _something to let me fly without burning myself up._

The metal flows around her, forming a pair of wings feathered in white-gold on her back, and a fan of tail-feathers span between her legs. A pair of gauntlets form on her hands, with a cone-like aperture in the palm. Similar contraptions form as attachment to the toes of her boots.

Scorpia looks her up and down. “That’s rad.”

* * *

The misdirection spells serve to conceal them for the moment, but Mermista’s arrival has spurred the cohort of soldiers to action.

The three of them huddle together. “She’s canny,” Juliet notes. “She knows why we’re here, and she’s fleeing to buy time.”

“She’s the Empress for a reason,” Frosta says, “and everyone down there is wearing suppressor armor; I could drop them easy if they weren’t.”

“We need to turn the chase,” Bow says. “Get her to chase us.”

“Well, that should be fairly easy,” Catra says.

They all startle, at her sudden appearance.

“Don’t do that, I could have shot you,” Juliet notes.

“I might still,” Frosta notes.

“Yeah, yeah,” Catra says. “Okay, we’re going to call in a drone strike and decimate a few hundred clone soldiers, and then I’m going to pick-pocket the Empress.”

“There might still be civilians in these buildings,” Bow notes. Clone soldiers are entering the three-storey blocks around the plaza, emerging onto roofs and in windows.

“Damara, are you hearing that?” Catra asks.

“ _Lound and clear. Minimal collateral damage. Ball only; no hi-ex, AP, or incendiary. Commencing attack now._ ”

Off to the south side of the plaza, a couple of clones collapse. Then another few. One of them realizes where the enemy fire is coming from and fires back, alerting the entire cohort.

The soldiers seek cover behind sand-bags and buildings; deployable cover and reinforced hand-held shields come out. They are surprisingly effective against the heavy-caliber drone machine guns, since Damara is foregoing armor piecing.

The small-arms fire the clones respond with is not; mostly because hitting a target the size of a flying car, strafing a mile in the sky is flatly impossible.

Emplaced machine guns are brought to bear, and their crews make targets of themselves immediately.

“Stay put, and get ready to run,” Catra says. She leaps off the lip of the roof, and vanishes completely from sight before she even begins to fall.

Bow shimmies over to the edge and looks down. He ignores the headache that’s beginning to make itself known.

* * *

Catra passes through the battlefield, invisible, on Mermista’s trail by smell alone. She crosses the plaza amidst bullets ricocheting and clones shooting back, ignoring both. No stray shot is going to hit her — she has the cat’s own luck on her side.

Inside the lobby of the upscale apartment block across the plaza, she finds Mermista among a few soldiers, leaning on the shoulder of a clone trying to operate a dead radio.

“I’m afraid the resistance has deployed some manner of disruption,” the clone says, Catra overhears.

There’s eight of them. Seven clones, one empress.

Catra sneaks closer, and spies there, across Mermista’s brown neck, a gold chain. It is the simplest thing in the world to pinch it between two claws of her backhand, break the chain, and relieve the woman of the personal accessory.

Gently, Catra lets the thing drop into her outstretched hand. A locket. She opens it to find two miniature painted portraits: one of Sea Hawk, one of their kid. Catra puts the chain between her teeth, freeing up a hand, and draws three pistols. One in either hand, and one backhanded. Then she draws a fourth, holding it with her impossibly prehensile tail, white tip on the trigger guard.

That still leaves three. Out of darkness itself, she grows an extra set of arms, bringing the total up to six. The seventh clone is the radio operator.

Catra shoots all six guns at once. The recoil is too much for her tail, but it has already served its purpose: six clones fall over with bullet wounds in their heads. Catra shoots the radio operator with a follow-up shot from her left.

Mermista springs into action, spinning to see. Catra dismisses her pistols, and makes herself visible.

“ _You,_ ” Mermista says with a staggering amount of venom in her voice.

A pipe above Catra bursts, and a lance of high pressure water tears through the Catra-shaped blob of darkness.

“Wow,” Catra says, becoming visible five feet to the left of her previous apparent location. “You don’t waste any time going for the kill.” She holds up the locket. "You do know photographs are a thing now, right?

“Give it _back!_ ” Mermista bellows. The mass of water from the broken pipe turns into a whip, slicing Catra’s illusory form in half.

Catra lets her true self appear — she is wisely wearing ARW-PPE, or Mermista would have turned her insides into offal-pie filling. It has the added benefit of apparently hiding her from Mermista’s perceptions, according to the intel she got from Sea Hawk, or the Empress would have seen through her decoys.

She darts out of the door, turning invisible once more before crossing the active battlefield. The clones are beginning a retreat; returning fire on the drones is proving too difficult, and prolonging the engagement is proving too costly. Their air-support was supposed to prevent exactly this.

She’s almost at the other side of the plaza when Mermista bursts out of the building they were just in, flowing along inside a huge mass of water. She crosses the plaza like a crashing wave.

Catra is already scaling the building in leaps and bounds, pushing herself against the facade with Backhand. Within seconds she vaults the lip of the roof, out of sight, becoming visible, and with a flicker of darkness she turns into _Bow._

“What the—” Bow manages, before Catra leaps onto the lip of the roof, holding out the locket. “Empress! I got something of yours!” she shouts in Bow’s voice.

She hops down, out of sight, reverts to her original appearance, and tosses the locket to him. “Got your chase,” she says, and starts running.

Bow, Juliet, and Frosta waste no time getting traction, speeding across the roof, and leaping to the next one. Behind them, Mermista flows over the lip of the roof, and gives chase.

“ _Now would be a very good time to work on that heatstroke!_ ” Juliet yells.

“ _Way ahead of you!_ ” Frosta replies.

Bow keeps quiet, and ahead. He’s the target of the Sea Empress’ ire; one wrong move will likely maim — if not outright kill — him. Friendship with Sea Hawk notwithstanding. The top of his visor shows the view behind him, and there he sees Juliet spin in the air to shoot at Mermista, who with her water rips a broad section stone off a roof to use as a shield.

Then she throws that stone directly at him.

He dodges narrowly, mid air, with the thruster pack on his back ripping him to the side.

“ _All right, that’s it, Empress!_ ” Juliet says.

“Don’t!” Bow manages.

In her next jump, Juliet unslings her suppressor projector. Before she can even pull the trigger on it, Mermista is already moving. She has just landed on a roof with shingled edges.

The speed of sound in water is about three times the speed of sound in air. This means Mermista can theoretically be about three times faster than Spinnerella, who has sometimes been called the fastest Runestone Wielder in the world. Mermista’s speed is enough to out-do any human or elvish reaction speed at any rate.

The roof shingle goes directly through Juliet’s projector at bullet speeds. Her hands are mostly out of the way, but three of her fingers of one and half of her other hand disappear in an instant. She aims the device from her hip instead of her shoulder, which saves her life.

The projector itself explodes from the force of impact, sending fragments and bits of burnt clay flying off at lethal speeds.

Juliet doesn’t scream; she just tumbles to the ground below. “ _Juliet!_ ” Frosta screams.

“She’s still alive!” Bow yells back. “Don’t slow down!”

He saw her glide to the ground. Unconscious people can’t operate intentionality controllers. If she was dead she would have plummeted like a sand bag.

Then he sees in his visor, Mermista ripping another shingle off, snapping off a corner, and then the corner disappears.

There’s a sharp crack, and unimaginable pain in his back. He comes in for a landing on the next roof, but his legs aren’t obeying him. He stumbles, tumbles, and lands rolling, hitting his tender head again in the process.

In a second, water flows around him, and Mermista is there. Water flows into his fist and pries his fingers apart, relieving him of the pendant.

Inside the mass of water, he sees Mermista mouth: _sorry._

With the last bit of effort he can manage, he lifts his hand and makes a rude gesture back at her.


	9. Manumission, Part 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cw: self-inflicted injury, battle injuries

“Micah.”

Micah startles slightly, closes the book he is perusing, and looks to his left.

“Angie?” There a few aisles down the east wing, is his wife. “I— I heard you were dead.” He stands, taking a few steps towards the edge of the podium. The clones part for him to pass if he wants to.

She’s wearing resistance-made armor, in gentle purple hues reminiscent of Brightmoon’s official colors. Her wings protrude magnificently through it.

He wishes so desperately she wasn’t wearing that helmet, so he could see her hair once more.

“Is that why you’ve been dabbling in dark magics?” She asks.

“No— I… Listen, ‘dark’ is a misnomer. Sacrificial spell components are completely benign and very predictable to work with,” Micah says with some exasperation, “if costly. Which they are by definition.”

“Spoken like a dark sorcerer,” Angella notes coldly.

Micah frowns. This is not how he pictured the reunion with his wife. “The entire notion of magical technology relies on the caloric principles of equivalent exchange: magical energy can neither be created or destroyed, every imperfect process incurs loss, and no process can be made perfect. And yet nowhere in base sorcery is magical energy used; it is entirely an innovation made by artificers, and their justification for it is verbatim the justifications for sacrifice in dark magic.”

Angella hugs herself, and Micah wishes so desperately he could step down from the podium and go to her and hug her instead. She looks away. “You look like a monster now.”

He does. Pale skin. Fangs. Strange eyes. In a way he looks more like his patron galactic emperor than the man he once were.

He steps down from the podium, and takes a few steps into the space beyond the circle of clones. “Angella, I still lo—”

And then a silent lightning bolt impacts his personal shield, and almost overpowers it. He spins to face the caster, reinforcing his personal defences with a quick rune.

“Shadow Weaver. I might have known.”

There, a few aisles down the main hall, is his former mentor-turned-nemesis; also in armor, pointing a simple wand at him.

“How is your hand?” He asks.

She sneers. “Did Adora tell you to ask me that?”

He smiles. “Let me guess, is my dear sister with the two of you also? I suppose you’ve come to overpower me and bring me over to the side of ‘good’ or am I far off?”

Shadow Weaver traces out a circle with her wand and a rune flashes bright, sending another lightning bolt at him, this time with thunder. His shield absorbs it readily.

Then from his left, temporarily obscured by the bright light, comes a gloved fist. The punch impacts the fail-safe shield an inch from his body, and is barely deflected. He brings his staff up for defense and attempts a rune, but Angella swipes a finger through his casting, disrupting it.

Something grabs his heel as he attempts to backpedal and he stumbles.

The strong hands of clones catch him, and he speaks the activation world for his golem.

Several tons of construct comes instantly to life, with the singular goal of protecting its maker. With the crunch of stone tiles breaking underfoot, his golem leaps into action, and lasts out at Angella with a heavy steel hand. She dodges, wisely.

Then the back of the golem, now in front of him, opens up, and he leaps inside.

Angella takes the opportunity to attempt to shoot his valuable sacrifices, but the invisible domed shield around the podium protects them from such trivialities.

“Your Majesty, Headmistress,” Shadow Weaver says. “You should both seek cover immediately.”

Micah reaches out with a steel hand, and designates a clone as collateral. Then he goes for the killing blow he should have made all those years ago. A forbidden rune, carefully and blindingly quickly cast. “ _Aeons in an Instant!_ ”

The clone crumbles to dust.

A spherical volume surrounding Shadow Weaver breaks its relationship with the ordinary passage of time; order gradually becoming chaos, in favor of leaping with abandon into the gulf of entropy.

Inescapable, utterly destructive.

Shadow Weaver waves her wand just as the spell begins, tracing out a Rune that Micah can barely read in time — collateral transfer. But to what?

And then the books around her, on ten shelves, turn to dust instead of her.

“We’re in a library, Micah,” Shadow Weaver says. “You know how much I value knowledge.”

“Almost as much as you love power,” Micah says.

“The two are not necessarily distinct. Dark magic works through value. You have your clones, gifts from your precious galactic emperor. I have…” She gestures. “Everything in this room.”

“Troublesome,” Micah notes. Then he snaps his metal fingers, and a spark leaps from them. The spark becomes a flame, and the flame becomes a firefly. Another clone turns to dust. “ _Multiply._ ”

Ten thousand fireflies take off from his palm, and where they fly, the books they touch begin burning.

Shadow Weaver casts an insecticidal invocation, and Micah interrupts it with a lightning bolt.

Within seconds, the great library of Candila is in the beginning stages of what will be known as the Great Conflagration.

“Let’s try this again, shall we?” He says. “ _Aeons in an Instant!_ ”

* * *

Catra sees Juliet go down from two blocks away. She is keeping pace only by well-placed portals, but to actually engage she’d have to stop jumping through portals, and then they’d outrun her.

When Juliet goes down, she curses herself for not bringing something — _anything_ that would let her move faster. She portals to her side, at street level.

“Damara, permission to cas-evac by portal,” Catra says.

“ _Why the fuck are you asking?! Go!_ ”

Catra scoops up Juliet from the ground, causing her to groan in pain. “Good, you’re not dead.” The she steps through a portal, onto the Swift Wind; directly into the infirmary, blood dripping from the elf woman’s hanging hands.

* * *

Netossa sits by Spinnerella’s unconscious form. It is _profoundly_ strange to have Hordak himself fill the role of attending physician, much less him wearing a physician’s white robe. Entrapta and Damara both are occupied in the control center.

Glimmer seems to trust him.

“Everything is in order,” Hordak says, inspecting her vitals monitor. “Your wife is in robust health, and the sedative will not harm the foetus.”

“Netossa, I have to go back out, they need me,” Glimmer says.

“Yeah… I’m coming,” Netossa says, and rises. She grabs her helmet and puts it on.

“With respect, Princess,” Hordak says. “Perhaps you should remain. Your combat effectiveness is compromised.”

“What?” Netossa says, with emphasis.

Hordak turns to look directly at her, almost looking startled at her change of tone. “I mean no reproach; it would be tragic if you were too occupied worrying about your wife, and became a casualty in the fight.”

“I’m _fine,_ ” Netossa says. “I _have_ to be.”

“Then hold out your hand,” Hordak says.

Netossa does. It shakes.

“Netossa,” Glimmer says. “It’s okay if we trade one-for-one. There’s a lot more of us.”

A portal opens directly in the infirmary, almost sucking the light out of the room by its presence. Out steps Catra, carrying Juliet in her arms, and deposits her in a bed.

Hordak hurries over.

“Amputation wounds,” Catra says, gesturing to the bleeding stumps of hand and fingers. “Probable fragmentation damage, injury from fall.”

Hordak turns to the others. “Princess Netossa, since you’re hear to stay anyway, I could use an assistant.”

“Glimmer,” Catra says. “Team Wet needs help.” Then she leaps back through the portal.

* * *

Glimmer blinks through Catra’s portal, up above the rooftops. Off in the middle distance, Mermista chases Frosta. Her water mass gives off steam as they fight. Frosta’s suit’s guns versus Mermista’s rocks.

“ _Frosta, I’m back with Glimemr!_ ” Catra says.

“ _About fucking time!_ ”

Then Glimmer spots him. “Bow!” She yells.

“ _When did Flyboy get hit?!_ ” Catra asks, but gets no answer from Frosta.

Glimmer blinks down onto the roof, and falls to her knees. She connects her visor to his biometrics. He’s alive. Thank the stars and the moons and all the spirits, he’s alive.

“Bow?” she asks, tears welling up. "Where are you hit?

His eyes flutter. “ _Hey babe,_ ” he says quietly. “ _Can’t feel my legs._ ”

“I’m going to take you to the infirmary now,” Glimmer says.

“ _No— help Frosta,_ ” he says.

“ _Sparkles get your fucking boyfriend out of here,_ ” Catra says over the comms.

Glimmer touches Bow, and blinks them both aboard the Swift Wind again.

* * *

Hordak and Netossa both startle some at their appearance.

“Oh _no,_ ” Netossa says, in the process of relieving Juliet of her armor.

“What happened to him?” Hordak asks, stemming the bleeding of Juliet’s mangled hand, bloodying his rubber gloves.

“He says he can’t feel his legs,” Glimmer says, voice quivering.

“ _I’ll be fine; She-Ra can heal me,_ ” he croaks.

Hordak looks at him for a beat. “Leave him on the floor for now, if we move him we might worsen the break. Queen Glimmer, if you intend to stay here as well, please monitor his condition for me.”

“ _Go, they need your help,_ ” Bow says.

Glimmer shakes her head. She can’t.

* * *

Catra takes a run-up and leaps from the roof. In mid-air she lets herself slide into the darkness, and lets Melog’s power fill her body. Landing on the next roof, she has become fully quadrupedal, and the size of a car. Her mane and tail billow like black smoke, and her face contorts, jaw elongating and filling with horrific teeth.

She crosses the next roof in three leaps, and bounds off the edge of the roof, claws gouging in the stone; her galloping leaps become long enough that she clears alleys and streets in stride.

Mermista and Frosta clash and dart apart for a moment, and Catra lands in between them closer to Frosta, facing Mermista.

“Hop on!” Catra yells.

“Catra?!” Frosta asks.

Catra takes matters into her own hand, solidifying her tail and swiping the Princess in power armor up, and placing her on her beastly back.

Then she turns towards Mermista, and projects:

  
_You’re lucky She-Ra can heal. Otherwise I might kill you for maiming my friend._   


Then she vanishes from view, and Mermista’s water continues slowly boiling off under Frosta’s attack.

* * *

“ _Fuck,_ ” Mermista mutters to herself. She propels herself off the roof and down to street level, breaking open a water pump and pulling up replacements for what she’s losing. Considering her options, she decides on a street, and races down it, heading for the library where she knows she can find reinforcements.

She doesn’t get far. Two streets down, she flows into an intersection at high speed and loses grip on her water, crashing hard with the quick flow. Immediately she rolls to her feet and starts running hoping to clear the field.

Then a gigantic weight impacts her from above, and her chin hits the cobbles hard enough she bits the tip of her tongue off as her teeth smack together.

A presence appears beside her head, and a slow, warm, terrifying breath comes with it.

“Game over, Empress,” Catra says in a deep, rumbling voice.

Frosta’s mechanical boots land to her other side, and Mermista barely manages to turn her head to see the injection pen.

* * *

“ _How many more fingers can you give up before you can’t hold onto that wand anymore, Shadow Weaver?_ ” Micah mocks her.

Were it not for her suit, the air would be unbearably hot to breathe. She puts the wand to her throat, and speaks, disguising its origin. “Don’t be foolish, Micah. Toes are just as good.”

“ _I still have twenty clones; I don’t recall you being polydactylic._ ”

Shadow Weaver isn’t using her toes. The limp fingers are a ruse. She casts the killing curse again, and the bone marrow of another of her metatarsals dies. There’s plenty of bones in the foot, and dead bones won’t become an issue before next week.

“ _Shadow Weaver; come in, Shadow Weaver!_ ” Castaspella says in her ear.

Shadow Weaver doesn’t respond. This is her fight, and she is going to win it.

“ _Light Spinner,_ ” Angella says. “ _Reply right now, or I am going to assume you are incapacitated, and call reinforcements._ ”

“I am a _little_ busy right now, your Majesty,” Shadow Weaver sneers.

“ _Aeons in an Instant!_ ”

Shadow Weaver is already propelling herself away with the first syllable of Micah’s incantation — it is an interesting footnote of the Entropic Curse that it makes fires burn _faster._ And any good alchemist knows that the difference between a conflagration and an explosion is really just the speed of combustion.

The east wing of the library explodes.

“If you _must_ send someone,” Shadow Weaver says, “send someone we can afford to lose.”

* * *

Frosta picks Mermista up, and steps through the portal, leaving Catra in the street. She turns off the suppressor projector floating in the air, held in her backhand, and stows it away in her bag of tricks.

Then she leaps up the adjacent three-storey building in a single bound with feline grace.

There is smoke rising near the city center.

Using her backhand, she hold her communicator up — the earpiece won’t fit in her ear in this form. “Clear Skies, report?” Catra asks, looking up at the air battle.

“ _We’re holding!_ ” Starla answers, “ _the drones are doing most of the work now._ ”

“Unsanitary, report?”

“ _Yes: we have a large landing force being deployed outside city limits. The beacons are probably safe, but they are going to advance on the city, air support or no, and then things are going to get difficult,_ ” Peekablue says.

“Shit,” Catra mutters. “Base, requesting status update on Dark and Ground?”

“ _Team Dark is engaging King Micah in the library,_ ” Wrodak says. “ _Team Ground is standing by; Meteora and Huntara have yet to make a move._ ”

“Team Dark, come in?” Catra tries.

“ _Catra,_ ” Angella says, “ _Shadow Weaver has taken on Micah on her own; we are not sure how well it is going. Castaspella and I are trying to contain the fire._ ”

Catra looks up and sees two glowing figures approach, heading more or less directly for her. Soon enough, Scorpia and Adora touch down; Adora wearing some kind of new set of golden wings.

“Catra, is that you?” Scorpia asks.

“Yup,” Catra says. “I needed some longer legs.”

Frosta comes skating up the facade of the building. “Oh, hey Scorpia.”

“Hey kiddo.”

Adora stands next to Catra and looks over the city skyline. “What’s the fire?”

“Team Dark. Shadow Weaver and the King duking it out.”

“Should we help them?”

Catra looks at Adora, who is now _markedly_ smaller. “Not you.”

“What? Why?”

“Because King Micah could probably kill you.”

Adora sputters: “What, and somehow you’re immune to magic?”

“I have _way_ more experience fighting mages than you do; and you’re prone to making a target of yourself. Go reinforce Ground. If Meteora and Huntara reinforce Micah, we lose all three. We’re on the clock.”

Adora frowns, then nods. “Scorpia, Frosta, with me,” she says.

* * *

The east wing collapses; smoke and sparks belch everywhere. The podium is still untouched by the fire.

“You’re down to five clones,” Shadow Weave notes out-loud, from behind cover.

“What _is_ your endgame here, Light Spinner?” Micah asks. “Soon enough, Prime’s forces will roll in and take the city back.”

“Oh, will they now?” Shadow Weaver replies.

“For all the power the resistance projects, it takes men to hold the field; and I have seen his armies. It cannot stand all at once shoulder to shoulder on _Erulia._ ”

The dome shield is the most troubling part of this engagement by far. It is unlike most other barrier spells she has come across: the standard shattering spells don’t work, it seems to block light even though it is transparent, and despite its resilience to the ravaging fire and all her destructive spells, it allows Micah and his golem to freely pass in and out.

Impenetrable in all the ways that matter; only the killing curse can penetrate it, and that is expensive to cast: she is running out of dispensable bones.

If not for the very real risk of death, she would be thrilled at the prospect of such a spell existing.

“ _Need some help?_ ”

Behind Micah, _inside the dome,_ Catra steps out, wielding a pistol in each hand — each of four hands — and one hovering freely in the air.

Five shots ring out, and the five clones collapse with bullet wounds in their heads.

Micah’s golem form rotates on its own axis with horrific alacrity, and a gigantic metal fist passes directly through where Catra just was.

Catra appears out of a portal above the golem and lands, hammering Bane down into the marble.

“Come now, girl!” Micah says. “Do you really think I’d let that work twice?”

A glowing rune appears on the golem’s spherical body directly under Catra, and she leaps off before the flames materialize.

Bane is untouched by the searing heat of the Fifth Flame of Elm, of course. Mere fire cannot destroy such a weapon; but then a few square inches of marble under the blade point simply dislodge themselves and pop out. Bane clatters to the floor, and the small cuboid piece of dark marble clatters on the floor like a die.

Micah swivels the spherical golem body so the hole is in the transparent viewing window. Then the marble shifts and flows to fill the hole.

“Yeah, well, I didn’t expect it to,” Catra admits. “I just needed you distracted.”

Next to her, Shadow Weaver is standing.

“Let’s get rid of this dome shall we?” Shadow Weaver says. She waves her wand, forming a Rune, and the slight shimmer of the dome shield vanishes, bringing the full heat of the fire into the cool airspace.

Micah Lunges for Shadow Weaver, and Catra intercepts him, growing into her new beast form, biting down on the metal arm hard enough to leave a full set of teeth marks. Four legs with clawed paws provide more traction than Micah’s two, and she heaves, throwing him into the west wing.

The Golem body rolls, effortlessly landing upright. Then he points at Shadow Weaver and a gunshot rings out.

Shadow Weaver stumbles.

“Mage killer bullets,” Shadow Weaver notes, clutching her stomach. “Armor piercing.”

Catra snarls.

“Choose girl,” Micah says. “Your mentor, or me.”

Catra reverts to her humanoid form, and supports Shadow Weaver.

“ _Get him,_ ” she hisses.

“Smart girl,” Micah says. Then Catra’s backhand closes around his neck. Pushing it in through the hole in time almost mangled her invisible fingers; and reaching inside to get him felt like pushing through molten pitch.

He claws at his neck, gasping for breath, finding no purchase; the Golem mirrors his movements.

“Looks like I don’t have to choose,” Catra says.

“Catra, he might have a—” Shadow Weaver begins.

Then several explosive charges go off, and the largest domed roof on Etheria comes crashing down.

Catra scoops up Shadow Weaver and they are through a portal two whole seconds before hundreds of tons of steel and stone come down where they just stood.

* * *

“Netossa, please get another bed out of storage,” Hordak says as Catra steps into the infirmary. He tears off his rubber gloves and puts on a new pair.

Catra puts Shadow Weaver down on the last available infirmary bed.

“Hello Chancellor,” Shadow Weaver greets Hordak as he comes over.

“Doctor, please,” he corrects her. “Stomach wound, gunshot.” He reaches under Shadow Weaver, feeling on her back. “Exit wound. We need to operate, stop the bleeding.”

“Save it,” Shadow Weaver says. With shaking hands she undoes the clamps holding her hazard suit together, and unzips, baring her stomach. She dips a gloved hand in the blood, and draws a circle around the wound. A flame like a roman candle springs up out of the wound, and she growls in pain. The smell of burnt flesh is overpowering. “There. Cauterized.”

Hordak scowls. “That was not _safe._ Please refrain from self-administering procedures in _my_ infirmary.”

“See to the others, old friend,” Shadow Weaver says, and lets herself slump back.

“What happened?” Glimmer asks.

Catra looks away. “He got away,” she says.

Glimmer looks down at Bow.

Bow reaches up to caress her face. “ _It’s okay._ ”

“It’s _not_ okay,” she says. “I— You were right,” she says to him. “Are you sure you’re going to be okay?”

He gives her an OK-sign. She leans down and kisses him.

“We’ll be sure to take good care of him,” Netossa says patting her on the shoulder.

Glimmer stands up, and holds out a hand. Her staff appears in it. “Meteora and Huntara is all that’s left, right?”

Catra nods.

“Go on ahead, I’m just going to make a trip to the fabricator.”

“Sure thing, Sparkles.”

* * *

Cometa is sitting against the wall in the alley, clutching her head.

A gust of wind in the alley heralds the arrival of reinforcements. Scorpia’s flight projects the violent winds, as she lowers Frosta down on a wire. Adora lands almost soundlessly on white beams of starlight from her palms and boots, and a single flap from her golden wings.

Behind her, Scorpia herself lands hard, and with a spring in her step heads directly over to Perfuma.

“What are we looking at?” Adora asks Melissa.

“She’s just sitting on her fucking throne,” Melissa says.

There’s a distant explosion.

“Calling everyone,” Adora calls, “what was that?”

“ _The library just exploded,_ ” Castaspella notes. “ _With Shadow Weaver, Catra, and Micah still inside._ ”

“ _Negative,_ ” Damara notes, “ _Catra and Shadow Weaver have just entered the infirary._ ”

“She’s moving,” Melissa says. “I repeat, on all channels, Meteora is moving.”

Inside the palace, Meteora has gotten out of her throne, yanked hard on the chain around Huntara’s neck, and has begun making her way for the gate to the throne room, at a positively _casual_ pace.

“Sharpen up, we’re heading out,” Adora says. “Cometa?”

Cometa shakes her head. “She’s my sister,” she mutters.

“You don’t have to fight her, just counter her power if you can,” Adora says.

A portal opens in the alley, and Catra steps out, looking at Adora and nodding.

“Melissa, stay back from the fighting; we don’t need more casualties than what is strictly necessary,” Adora says. “Perfuma we—”

Then there’s a horrible presence.

They look up, all of them as one.

Up, at the edge of the roof across the street sits a… Thing.

Its flesh is white-grey. Two sets of eyes make contact with them, from a trifecta of heads conjoined at the back of the skulls. This misshapen head sits on a bull-neck, atop a double sets of shoulders, sporting four long, grotesquely muscular arms with wicked clawed hands. Its lower body and legs are _barely_ normal, but still obscenely muscular.

“Is it me or is that three Horde clones fused together?” Catra says.

It is nude, not that it means much; it is as sexless as its brethren.

A tremor goes through the earth, and the street outside the alley sinks two inches. Between the cobbles, sharp spikes of steel emerge, turning the entire street into a bed of nails.

“Scorpia, kill that clone thing,” Adora says.

“With pleasure,” Scorpia says, and with a massive leap, she kicks off against the wall of one of the buildings, and then uses her powers to propel herself airborne.

The clone leaps off the roof and takes flight, unpowered. A bolt of superheated plasma tears through the space it just occupied.

“Let’s get to the roofs,” Adora says, “I don’t like the prospect of this alley turning into a bed of nails.”

Catra hauls Cometa to her feet. Out of a portal, Perfuma’s giant plant-monster dragon emerges, almost as wide as the alley. It swallows Perfuma, and gives Frosta, Catra, and Melissa a ride, effortlessly climbing to the roof.

Adora lands, and looks toward the palace. “All right, calling _everyone._ We have one target left, I want _everyone_ available on it.” She looks up, to see Scorpia streaking across the sky, chasing the triple-clone.

“Peekablue, what in the world is that thing?” she asks.

“ _Prime bringing some of his own magic into the fight, I guess. I’ll keep you updated; I’m watching it keenly with drones._ ”

“Got an angle on Huntara and Meteora?”

“ _Hm. With their powers combined, they could likely lay the whole city in ruins in a matter of minutes. Don’t trust the ground you tread on; expect tremors, building collapses, sink holes, and spikes coming up from below._ ”

“Any chance we can evacuate the city, somehow? Base?”

“ _Not really, no,_ ” Damara concludes.

Adora curses under her breath, then she turns to the others. “Okay: Cometa and Frosta, you stay with Perfuma. Perfuma if you can, guard yourself against attacks from below. Catra, get airborne if you can. We need to end this hard and fast; try not to kill them, but if we don’t stop them a _lot_ of people might die.”

“Captain Adora—” Melissa says.

Adora glares at her. “Melissa, if you cannot follow orders, I’m going to have to ask you to retreat.”

There’s another tremor, and the building under them starts to shift.

“ _Scram!_ ” Adora yells.

Perfuma leaps from the building, Catra turns into her beast form and does the same, Adora blasts off.

Just in time for the building they just stood on to collapse in a pile of rubble, and then get impaled with hundreds of long, thin steel spikes, reaching a dozen yards into the air.

“ _There were people in that building,_ ” Cometa says. “ _Right?_ ”

Adora sees perhaps a trickle of red discoloration on some of the spikes. She doesn’t say anything.

“ _Probably not,_ ” Catra lies. “ _I can’t smell any blood._ ”

“Let’s _go!_ ” Adora yells.

She takes off towards the palace, and Perfuma and Catra follow on the ground. Metal spikes rise from the ground, streets turn into nail beds, buildings are run through by spires. As they close in, the attacks get more violent as the sharp spikes start branching into lethal trees of sharp metal.

They reach the palace walls to find them growing into a field of thorns. The palace grounds are quickly becoming shrouded in barbed metal.

“ _Girls, I have a bit of a problem,_ ” Scorpia says. “ _Clone guy just ate a lightning bolt to the face and didn’t even flinch._ ”

Adora looks up, squinting, and spots the blinding-white form of Scorpia at full power, throwing lightning bolts.

“Adora,” Catra says. “Until Scorpia asks for _help,_ ” she gestures with a throw of the head to the metal briar spilling out from the palace grounds. Spires of metal rise within, branching into dense canopies of razor barbs, protecting from aerial approach.

“Right; Cometa?” Adora asks. “Can you stop this?”

Cometa glides off Perfuma’s back, levitating. “There’s a _lot_ of metal in the ground here,” she says. She gestures towards the advancing briar, closing her eyes, feeling the power behind. The advance of the metal slows marginally. “No chance in a hundred years,” she says. “Not if you want me in _any_ fighting shape when we get inside.”

Adora strides forward, and as her foot hits the ground, the cobbles under her boot falls away into a sinkhole, full of spikes.

A simple flap of Halcyon’s wings lets her escape impalement. “Everyone be on guard for that kind of thing,” she says, gracefully landing on the edge of the sinkhole.

“Suppressor projectors.”

Catra reverts to humanoid form and draws from darkness itself four projectors; the heavier model meant to be mounted on a tripod. She holds one in her tail, one in each hand and —

“Shit.” She left her backhand with Micah. It is destroyed now; she will have to conjure another somehow.

“What?” Adora asks

“No matter!” Catra turns on the three of them, and the fourth disappears back in her bag of tricks.

Where she points the apertures, the growth of metal stops.

And Adora calls upon Parabell, and a dozen shimmering swords manifest, whirling forwards, magical blades slicing effortlessly through steel.

“Are you sure they’re just going to let us _walk_ in here?” Frosta asks.

“ _Problem! Problem-problem-problem!_ ” Scorpia yells.

The triple-clone drops out of the sky, its skin smoking. It lands behind Catra, and lashes out with a clawed hand, aiming specifically for the suppressor projector she’s holding with her tail. It strikes true, just as Catra darts away.

Catra rolls to her feet. She has spares.

Scorpia crashes down on top of the clone, white hot, leading with a pincer swipe that could cleave mountains. The ground caves in beneath the triple-clone, as it transfers the force of the blow effortlessly to the ground underfoot.

“Nothing I have bites him!” Scorpia says.

“Catra, keep those projectors up!” Adora yells. “Keep the metal back or we’re dead!”

A brilliant beam of light punches a hole clean through the torso of the triple-clone, from Melissa’s Toha-Zev rifle. It staggers, falling to one knee. For good measure she shoots it again, once in the chest, and then the head, blowing one of the three heads clean off.

It still doesn’t go down. Melissa fires again, and this time the beam deflects, punching a red-hot hole through the growing metal.

The razor canopies above grow dense enough to shade the sun. The grinding sound of metal against metal and stone grows louder. Everything stinks like iron.

The triple-clone’s wounds close, white flesh flowing in to fill the circular holes, and it stands up tall — if not straight — and three sets of green eyes look around it.

Then it lets out a bone-chilling yowl.


	10. Manumission, Part Final

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cw: battle injuries, battle violence, death

“New plan!” Adora shouts. “Frosta, Scorpia, Cometa, _make a path!_ Catra help me _kill this fucker._ ”

Scorpia powers up and unleashes a continuous stream of lightning, and metal starts melting immediately. Frosta steps in to cool the puddles of white-hot steel pooling on the shrouded palace grounds. Cometa reaches out and brings her sister’s influence to heel, halting the advance of spikes and blades.

Catra throws a suppressor to Melissa, who turns it on their rear, keeping metallic death at bay there. Then she draws Bane.

Adora manifests Parabell as a longsword.

The triple-clone regards them for a moment, then lunges for the others, going between them.

Catra and Adora move as one, impaling it on two blades, to the hilt. Almost unfazed, the triple clone turns its claws on the two of them, slashing with four hands tipped in five daggers each.

Catra ducks low, and takes a leg off at the knee.

Adora blocks with her shield and takes both arms off at the shoulder in one swipe.

The monster stumbles, and Adora bisects it at the midsection, while Catra jumps high spinning into a decapitating chop.

The triple clone falls over, twitching, in six pieces.

Then the arms begin clawing at the ground, attempting to push the torso towards the severed shoulder.

“Really?” Adora says. “How finely do we have to dice this guy?”

Catra hooks her claws in the pair of arms, careful to avoid the sharp end, and throws it into the advancing wall of branching metal spikes and razors.

Adora follows her example, skewering the three snarling heads with her sword and lobbing it under a blanket of rolling barbs.

The torso, hips, severed pair of arms, and the calf gets the same treatment, immobilized under tons of sharp metal, swallowed in the briar.

“Okay, that is one problem taken care of!” Adora says, and they jog to catch up to the others.

“How far do we have to go yet?” Catra yells.

“Not far!” Cometa replies, straining under the load of having to keep her sister’s might at bay.

Then there’s a grinding rustle above, and they look up to see an opening form in the blade canopy. Down through the tunnel, another triple clone descends, in free-fall — “ _Watch out!_ ” Adora yells — directly onto Perfuma’s monster form.

Frosta only barely manages to throw herself sideways, to avoid the claws.

The impact is hard enough to stagger Perfuma.

Cometa is within reach, and the clone twists and swipes her across the back, slicing through her armor. She screams and tumbles off Perfuma, to be caught gently in one of her claw-like hands.

Parabell, in the form of a trident spears the clone, sending it directly into the briar.

Catra lands on the shaft, protruding from the impaled monster, and relieves it of its three heads, kicking them away and into the metal hedge.

Adora runs to Cometa in Perfuma’s wooden grip. “Cometa! We need you!” She says, laying on hands, and letting starlight flow into her.

Cometa coughs. “Fuck!”

“Cometa?!” Scorpia calls out. “I need help here!”

Gritting her teeth, Cometa holds out a hand again, and the advancing wall of metal stops in front of them.

There’s a rumble in the earth, and a sinkhole opens up a few feet behind her. Out of it yet another triple-clone bursts.

Perfuma’s gigantic hand closes around its head and upper torso before it can even put a foot to the cobbles, and pulls it bodily out of the ground, slamming it onto the stones.

Then she twists her war form’s massive head around and from its five-parted lips, a long purple tongue shoots, tipped in a vicious barb. It punctures the monstrous clone in the shoulder, and forces its way inside through the wound.

The triple-clone screams three dissonant and inhuman screams, and then two dozen purple barbed tentacles bursts from its skin; and proceed to rip it apart in a shower of gore. The now many-branching tongue then spears chunks of quivering flesh, tossing it into the metal briar walls.

The path they have traversed has so far been closing up behind them, but now it opens.

Adora pre-emptively sends a half-dozen whirling swords down the opening corridor, and hits something there.

Still, somehow, a triple-clone emerges from the hole, coated in the brown blood of its fallen brother.

Catra takes a run-up, dodges past its attempt at a counter-attack, and runs her claws across its chest. She dances back, and darkness begins spreading from the wound, like a poison. The triple-clone falls back against the metal briers, shuddering. Where the darkness takes hold, flesh begins crumbling like ash.

Then, up ahead Scorpia yells.

Adora and Catra turn to see an opening appear right by Scorpia, and a triple-clone drops in. It swipes at Scorpia, who parries; claws go through armor, and bruise nigh-impenetrable skin. Scorpia lunges forward and seizes the monster by the neck with her pincer.

“Look away!” she yells.

They do. The reflection of the light in the metal all around them makes it almost blinding.

When it subsides, Scorpia is holding a charred corpse. She drops it, and resumes melting a way through the metal.

Perfuma passes by it in the narrow corridor.

“You just need to kill them all at once, it looks like,” she notes, her voice transmitting through the bulk of her creature with perfect clarity.

Adora pokes the charred corpse with her sword. Then she puts a hand to her ear. “Starla, everyone, come in.”

“ _Read you,_ ” Starla says.

“If you see a creature that looks like three horde clones fused together, do not engage, I repeat, do not engage. They are hard to kill, dangerous in melee, and possess some kind of adaptation-ability that lets them deflect attacks after they have been hit a few times by the same attack. We are having trouble with them over here!”

“ _I see a few; they are heading to the palace — the palace grounds are completely overgrown with some kind of plant,_ ” Starla says.

“Yeah, we’re in it. How many?”

“ _I count five._ ”

“Shit.”

Above them the metal retracts in a wide radius, making a spacious tunnel for the five triple-clones to descend through. Catra is already in motion, and from her bag of tricks she draws the Baryon-Fermion-Gravitron cannon, points it skywards, and sends the ball-lightning projectile skyward.

Three triple-clones fall through, mangled but regenerating. Adora sends several blades to part them, and skewer the bits to the advancing walls of barbs and razors.

Two more drop down on more controlled descents.

Catra throws Bane at one, who dodges, only for Bane to loop around in the air and embed itself in the clone’s shoulder. Black spreads from the wound, and the clone’s arms go limp. It lunges past Catra, to get at the others, but Catra kicks it in the midsection with bone-pulverizing force, sending it tumbling backwards.

Adora nails the other to the ground with a ten-foot sword. There, amazingly, it begins sliding back and forth on the blade, cutting itself in half to get free. Adora puts a stop to that by retracting the impaling sword, and cleaving the clone vertically.

“These guys are pushovers,” Catra says.

“No,” Adora says. “We’re just that powerful.”

“Fair.”

“If he has an army of these, we’re in deep shit.”

“We’re through!” Scorpia yells. Her lightning has just broken through into an open space.

With haste all of them run into the meadow. All around the plaza directly in front of the main gate, is growing metal. There, on the Candilan sigil, stands Meteora, in an opulent gown. Huntara kneels beside her, still chained, dressed in burlap. She’s bleeding from a cut on her forehead.

“Well, well, well,” Meteora says. “If it isn’t my dear sister, back from the dead. Did you elope to Brightmoon and convince the Queen to lie to me and sis?”

“Metty, how can you even _say_ something like that?!” Cometa yells. “I was _dead_ and She-Ra brought me back.”

“Did she now? Troublesome. I want it back.”

"What?’

“The power you stole from me by coming back to life. Go back to being dead so I can be all-powerful again.”

Cometa is too stunned by this blatant intent to commit sororicide, to come up with a response.

“All right,” Adora says. “Hard and fa—”

A steel spike rockets out of the ground, and directly into her side. Adora looks down at it, then calmly cuts it with Parabell, both in front and behind, and pulls the metal out, healing the wound with a burst of starlight.

“And try not to get impaled, if you can,” Adora adds.

Meteora cackles. “How very, very _interesting_ of you, She-Ra.”

The entire plaza breaks up, ground shifting into rough terrain by Huntara’s power.

Scorpia rockets upwards and launches an arc of lightning directly at Meteora; a metal rod rises out of the ground, grounding it harmlessly, heating to a dull glow.

Frosta snaps her fingers, but instead of Meteora and Huntara falling over with heatstroke, they both turn silver.

Catra leaps through a portal into close quarters, emerging directly behind Meteora, only to be immediately impaled by a dozen spikes, and dissolving into shadow — a decoy. The real Catra shimmers into being, having not moved at all, draws a pistol, and shoots. Meteora brings forth a simple metal barrier from the ground to block.

Adora advances steadily wreathed in Stella Nova’s protection, and blades rise out of the ground to stop her, only to bend against the silky field surrounding her; and then meet Parabell and be cut back. The ground opens up under her, and a flap of wings from Halcyon carries her across the gap.

Huge chains erupt from the hole, wrapping themselves around Adora, before she can cut them, and drag her into the hole which closes around her, burying her alive.

“She’s fine!” Catra yells, reassuring the others.

Perfuma, now desperate, belches a steam cloud of spores at Huntara and Meteora, only for Meteroa to erect a fine mesh screen, and strike steel against rock to make sparks that ignite the cloud of poison.

“Nuisance, you,” Meteora notes. Over a dozen huge spikes shoot out, directly under Perfuma, impaling her war form body like a pin cushion. Frosta, Cometa, and Melissa get thrown off by the impact; Melissa lands hard.

Perfuma goes limp.

Scorpia lets out an anguished cry: “ _No!_ ”

The plant abomination body starts shifting, phytoid flesh shifting fluidly to extricate itself from around the metal foregin bodies. “I’m fine, Sco!” she calls out.

Melissa gets to her feet, takes aim, and fires her Toha-Zev at maximum power. Her position behind Perfuma obscures this from Meteora’s view, and the beam tears through the screen, meeting no armor, and vanishes a section of chain.

“Clever!” Meteora exclaims, and the chain springs to life in her hand, lunging like a snake, aiming to reconnect.

Huntara rolls to her feet, dodging it, and with a stomp, sends a sharp shard of rock into her hand, which she uses to cleave off the collar. “ _You cunt!_ ” she bellows. “I ought to _strangle you!_ ”

“Let us dispatch these rebels first, then… Two out of three, winner takes all?” Meteora asks.

Huntara sneers, then looks at their assailants, traversing the rubble field. “They are going to get us eventually, we have to run—”

The metal briar opens up where it engulfs the main palace gate, and the doors are thrown open. Meteora turns and begins walking.

“Not so fast,” Glimmer says.

She is standing twenty paces away, on the part of the plaza still intact.

She holds up a large clear container of a yellowish liquid; then inside it, flashes of purple light appear, and the liquid gradually turns reddish.

Meteora stumbles. “No!” She lashes out with a hand, and a blade rises from the ground, but at a placid pace. Glimmer doesn’t even bother to blink out of the way, but steps aside.

Meteora falls to the ground on all fours, dizzy. She pukes on the ground.

“Your power is dependant on your blood,” Glimmer says. “I just so happen to specialize in replacing people’s blood with other things. Normally in fatal fashion, but today I am merciful.” She sloshes the container — not that there’s air in it to slosh. “This is — _was_ — blood without the red bits that makes it work. You’ll live.”

A stone passes through the jar, shattering it, splashing plasma diluted blood everywhere.

“Damage is already done, I’m afraid,” Glimmer says, discarding the handle. “Now I just need to blink you a few miles into the sky and we’re done.”

Huntara looks to her side where Meteora is attempting to crawl away, and nearly blacking out from the effort.

Then she slides a foot into a wide stance, and mimes drawing two things apart with her fists, with great strength behind the pull.

There’s a rumble, and the earth opens a gaping chasm. Meteora tumbles into it.

“ _No!_ ” Cometa screams.

The chasm closes in an eye-blink, hard enough to shake the entire city.

Cometa feels her connection to the Flame Core strengthen tenfold.

With a battle-cry, she leaps into the air, levitating her own armor against the metal lying in wait under ground, and rockets directly at Huntara. With an outstretched hand she pulls the metal briar to her, the steel becoming liquid without melting, gathering in a flurry of droplets.

The smooth sphere then becomes a wicked whip-like skewer, rocketing towards Huntara, who pulls a boulder out of the ground to parry the strike. It goes directly through, punching through her solar-plexus.

Huntara sputters blood, and stumbles back.

Then there’s the audible ‘ _thwip_ ’ of a Zev rifle, and Cometa loses levitation, falling to the ground in a tumble with a wound in her back.

Melissa starts running across the rubble field, rifle in hand. “No, no-no-no, no!” she mutters under her breath.

She reaches Huntara and throws off her helmet, kneeling beside her wife, now bleeding out on the cobbles. “Please!” she hisses.

Huntara can’t speak; her diaphragm is took the hit. She can’t even breathe. Still she reaches up a hand to caress Melissa’s face, and mouths: _I’m sorry._

A gold fist punches through the ground. Catra jogs over and grasps it, and with a mighty heave pulls Adora out of the ground. Halcyon covers her as full-body armor, but flows into her winged forehead protector immediately.

“Good timing. We need some healing,” Catra says, gesturing.

Adora runs up to Cometa, who is lying sprawled, ace contorted in agony and gasping for breath. Dying but not dead yet.

Melissa looks over at Adora. “Please, She-Ra, help!” Tears stream down her face.

She runs over, to see Huntara lie with her head in Melissa’s lap, limp. There’s a _lot_ of blood.

“What happened?” Adora asks, inspecting the wound.

“Cometa did this,” Melissa says. “Hunty killed the Queen, and she just snapped.”

“So you shot Cometa,” Adora concludes. She puts a hand on Huntara’s wound, and with a brilliant flash of light, restores the orc woman to health.

Huntara coughs and sputters, spitting blood.

“Sedate her,” Adora orders.

The she jogs back to Cometa, and puts a hand on her back, healing her as well. She helps her to her unsteady feet.

“Thanks,” Cometa says, and takes off her helmet.

Adora answers her gratitude with a punch to the face.

Cometa falls sideways in the rubble. As soon as she gains her bearings, she lashes out at Adora. “She _killed my sister!_ ” she screams, pulling together the liquid metal once more.

Parabell hovers a half-inch from her throat, held in Adora’s hand. The liquid metal falls to the ground in heavy droplets.

“And when the war is over,” Adora says, radiating authority, “she will answer for that.”

The liquid metal sphere solidifies, and falls into the dust. Cometa begins crying. “ _Bring her back, please!_ ” she wails.

Adora looks over by Huntara. “Where is the corpse?”

“A few hundred feet underground,” Catra guesses, appearing by her side.

“I felt a big tremor,” Adora notes.

Catra nods. “Huntara opened the earth and it swallowed Meteora, then the fissure slammed shut hard enough to be felt for miles. If I’m honest, I think we might not have a recoverable corpse. At least, not in a timely fashion; we’d need Huntara to undo what she did, and for that we need her back on our side…”

Adora looks down at Cometa. “We have to evacuate,” she says. “I’ll do what I can to bring her back, but I don’t know if it’s possible.”

Cometa lets herself fall into the rubble, wailing.

Adora crosses the rubble field, onto the intact section of plaza, goes up to Melissa, and punches her in the face too. “ _We do_ not _shoot out allies!_ ”

Catra rubs her eyes. Then she traipses over to Cometa, and pulls the princess to her feet. “Get up.”

She wrests herself away, stumbling, but remaining standing.

“We have to go,” Catra says.

They all return to the Swift Wind by portals and Glimmer’s teleportation.

The city is overrun. A fifth of it is full of virtually impassable metal debris.

The Swift Wind speeds away, invisible.

* * *

Adora takes five minutes to just sit in the cargo bay. The others filter out to the locker rooms and armory to disarm and doff armor. Now that adrenaline is no longer in constant supply, everyone feels their exhaustion.

Glory is sleeping in a corner of the room, and in the opposite corner, Perfuma’s war form is neatly rolled up into a coil.

Catra sits down next to her.

“Good job,” she says.

“It doesn’t feel like I did a good job,” Adora notes.

“Spinnerella, Mermista, Huntara,” Catra counts on her fingers. “Prime still has Micah, but he’s no Runestone wielder.”

“I hear he’s worse,” Adora notes.

Catra shrugs. “ _I_ can probably take him. I’m beginning to learn how he thinks.”

Adora rises with a grunt. “I need to go tend to the wounded.”

Catra follows.

* * *

Adora enters the infirmary, already feeling the burn of overuse. Several people are waiting in the hall: Netossa, Frosta, Sea Hawk and ’Dora, Melissa, and then Castaspella of all people.

“Ah, Captain Adora, Catra,” Hordak notes. “Excellent timing; and congratulations on the victory.”

Adora is slightly taken aback by his demeanor. Not that she didn’t know he volunteered as infirmarist. “Uh, thanks?”

“Please, I have triaged the injured,” he says, gesturing. Against the back wall, Spinnerella, Mermista, and Huntara are all lying in beds, sedated. “The sanitization victims are least concern.”

Bow is lying in one bed, intubated. Glimmer sits beside him looking worried and tired.

Juliet lies in the next, seemingly awake, both hands bound in gauze. She doesn’t even turn her head.

Shadow Weaver lies in the last, suit still unzipped to the waist. She turns to look at them, giving a small wave.

“Master Bow is most gravely hurt.”

Bow is lying unconscious in a hospital bed, intubated. “With surgery, he will likely survive, permanently paraplegic. He has suffered multiple fractures and dislocations of the spine. I also read in his chart that he has suffered a concussion, which I can only guess has been worsened by whatever impact caused his back to break; scans indicate moderately severe traumatic brain injury, and his neurological condition is still deteriorating.”

“Broken spine, and what, you moved him?” Catra asks, pointing to his armor on the floor, cut open and left where he lay.

“The medical scanner cannot operate on patients lying on the floor,” Hordak says. “A design oversight I shall see remedied as soon as possible.”

Adora puts a hand on Bow’s sternum, and channels starlight. A soft radiance fills the infirmary. His eyes flutter open, and he looks to his side to see Glimmer. She takes his hand and gives it a squeeze.

“Marvelous,” Hordak notes and approaches him. “Allow me to remove your breathing tube, Master Bow. Try not to gag.”

Meanwhile, Adora goes over to Juliet. She’s barely responsive.

Catra inspects her IV drip. “Pain killers,” she notes. “Lots and lots of them.”

“Multiple fractures and dislocations, traumatic amputations of several fingers and part of hand,” Hordak says, gently extubating Bow. “Lucky to be alive, but will make a full recovery in time. Debilitating pain, chronic pain likely to develop despite recovery.”

Adora gives her the same treatment: a gentle, powerful radiance. The bandages on her hands bulge and tear, as new fingers and palm spring into existence. She looks over at Adora, smiles weakly, then promptly falls asleep.

Catra dials the morphine dispenser down to zero.

That leaves only one.

“And then there’s you,” Catra says, stepping over to Shadow Weaver.

“Hello, girls,” Shadow Weaver says, with a raspy, strained voice.

“She’s been shot; cauterized the wound with magic,” Catra says.

“Indeed,” Hordak concurs. “Irresponsible stunt to pull. It is a miracle she did not cause third-degree burns on her internal organs.”

Adora comes over to Shadow Weaver’s bed. She takes a deep breath.

Catra looks at her. “She’s been on her best behavior, Adora,” Catra says. “Genuinely helpful every step of the way; in her own way.”

“That’s very kind of you to say,” Shadow Weaver says.

Adora puts a hand on Shadow Weaver’s abdomen. “Let’s just get this over with.”

A brief wave of starlight leaves the cauterization wound a white scar. There’s no full-body-encompassing wave of light here.

“Don’t suppose you could try to do something about my foot bones and my eye?” Shadow Weaver says. “I’m afraid I used both for some dark magic.” She gestures to her eye which has no iris nor pupil.

“I’ll do the eye,” Catra says.

Adora puts a hand on Shadow Weaver’s boot, and channels starlight there; Catra gently wipes a darkness-infused thumb over Shadow Weaver’s eyelid.

She blinks a few times; her new iris is so dark grey as to be almost black. “Thank you. I owe you both a substantial favor.”

“I don’t want you in my debt,” Adora says plainly. “Just… Keep being helpful.”

Shadow Weaver swings her legs out of bed, and stands, then exits the infirmary, leaving them with Glimmer, Bow, and Juliet.

Hordak has finished extubating Bow, and he draws unassisted breaths.

He sits up, with Glimmer hovering over him the whole way. “Okay,” he says. “That could have gone a _lot_ worse. Thanks for the heal, Adora.”

“Don’t make a habit out of it,” Adora says. She’s already feeling the sunburn already, and her vision is a bit sensitive.

Glimmer helps him stand; dressed only in an undersuit. “I think I pissed myself a little while I couldn’t feel my legs,” he notes.

Catra snorts.

Hordak meanwhile attends to Juliet, gently shaking her awake. She wakes, and has a brief moment of panic at the sight of him. “Madam Juliet, your injuries has been healed, please retire to your sleeping quarters for resting.”

“Right, yeah,” Juliet says. She looks at her hands, and Hordak hands her a pair of scissors, letting her relieve herself of the gauze. There’s a lot of dried blood, and her new fingers are albino-white.

“I can fix the skin color if you want,” Catra offers.

“No need,” she says, and hops out of bed, heading over to the door giving every sign that she’s about as tired as a person can be without falling asleep where they stand.

She opens the door, and as she staggers out, they hear Castaspella: “Oh, goodness, old girl, let’s get you to bed.”

“I thought she was here for Shadow Weaver,” Catra notes.

“As if,” Glimmer says. “Aunt Casta and Juliet are old friends, she was liaison with Mystacor’s on magical security work before she was assigned to me.”

Hordak checks up on the three sleeping patients, then vanishes into the adjacent small office.

“So,” Glimmer says. “Three out of five isn’t bad.”

“Sorry we couldn’t get your dad back, Sparkles,” Catra says.

Glimmer waves her hand in the air. “I lost him fifteen years ago; I barely know him. The worst part is my mom is going to be broken up about it.”

* * *

Bow and Glimmer leave, and Catra lets Netossa and Melissa in, and sends a letter to Sea Hawk.

Hordak moves the beds into a better arrangement for surgery.

“Hey, are you okay?” Catra asks Adora.

Adora blinks the spots away from her eyes. “Starlight overuse. Again.”

Catra takes her hand. “I’m here; whatever you need.”

The door opens, and Entrapta enters, followed by Sea Hawk with ’Dora on his arm. She babbles and coos, at being in a new room; her upper lip and nose-tip is completely white, against her tan skin. She looks very much like her father.

Entrapta heads directly to the sink, and shrugs off her tentacle arms which stand up on their own. She rolls up her sleeves and washes thoroughly. Hordak hands her a lab coat, an apron, and helps her put on rubber gloves. Her hair is done in a single ponytail.

“Shall we begin?” she says.

* * *

The surgeries go well; in as much as a medical procedure that requires what is tantamount to divine intervention to work, can go well. Entrapta is getting quick at it, especially now that she has her omni-tool for the tedious and delicate extraction work. It is even self-sterilizing.

They wake Mermista first.

Adora gently takes her head in both hands, and channels her starlight. Catra has a hand on her shoulder the whole time.

Mermista gives a little start, as her breathing resumes unaided. She props herself up on an elbow, rubbing her eyes, and opens them to see her daughter lying on her chest. And that is all it takes for her tears to begin flowing. She pulls a babbling and confused ’Dora close, and holds her gently.

“Welcome back, my dear,” Sea Hawk says, sitting by her side.

The long moment of reunion passes, and Mermista takes a moment to orient herself. “Fuck, I’m still wearing this white bullshit,” she says, handing ’Dora off to Sea Hawk, as if her armor is unfit to touch her daughter.

Sea Hawk holds out a hand and helps her to her feet. “Let’s get you changed, and throw that outfit directly in the recycler; Captain, there wouldn’t happen to be an incinerator on board, hm?”

Adora shakes her head.

Mermista looks at Adora, then Catra, and Entrapta. “Thank you,” she says, and bows deeply. Then they leave in a modest amount of hurry.

The door closes.

“You first,” Melissa says to Netossa, two beds over, breaking the silence.

Netossa doesn’t object out of a sense of modesty.

Adora heads to Spinnerella’s bed, followed by Catra. A brief, gentle administration of healing is enough to undo the neurological damage from the sanitizing wasp incorporating itself and replacing strands of brain matter with its own alien tissue.

Spinnerella sits up with a shriek.

“It’s okay! You’re safe!” Netossa says, solacing her.

Spinnerella takes on look at her wife, and pulls Netossa into a tight hug. She starts crying; sobbing into Netossa’s shoulder. “ _I’m sorry!_ ” she wails.

Netossa holds her fast, as if determined never to let go of her ever again.

Catra rubs Adora’s shoulder, and Adora has to support herself on the wall for a moment.

“Here, let me just try something,” Catra says quietly, and takes Adora’s hand. Through it, she channels a mere whisper of darkness. The absence-as-a-substance absorbs readily, and Adora perks up. Her skin cools, and her vision clears.

“That helped,” she says.

Catra just smiles back.

Adora heads over to Huntara’s bed. She puts one hand on either of Huntara’s temples, and restores her to life.

Huntara stirs a little, then rolls over, without waking.

Melissa chuckles. Then she gently slaps Huntara on the cheek, and the orc woman wakes, looking around for a moment to assess her surroundings. “Ah,” she says. “Damn.”

“What?” Catra asks.

“I killed the queen of Candila, didn’t I?” Huntara asks.

“I’m curious to know _why,_ ” Adora asks. “Her sister almost killed you for it.”

Huntara runs a hand over her solar plexus. “She was a monster. I figured since I was going to get captured and de-converted, I could get my revenge.”

“How was it in Prime’s best interest?” Catra asks. “You were sanitized.”

“She was… Unstable. Unreliable. She waited until we were the only target left to act, when we could— well. Let’s just say it’s a _good_ thing for the resistance that she was a self-absorbed, cruel woman, full of hubris.”

“Sounds like we dodged a bullet,” Catra notes.

Adora glares at her. “Cometa is _heartbroken._ If we had captured her—”

“One of us would have had to either kill her, alter her brain somehow, or strip her of power. Which would you prefer?”

Adora doesn’t have a good answer.

The door opens.

Scorpia and Perfuma are standing there, both in tasteful _matching_ leisurewear.

“I need someone to take a look at Perfuma,” Scorpia says, gravely.

“I’m _fine_ Scorpia,” Perfuma replies.

“Well,” Hordak says. “If the mistresses Spinnerella, Netossa, Melissa, and Huntara would kindly give us the room; do you prefer examination by myself or Entrapta?”

Space is made, the premises are cleared, and Perfuma gets the middle bed. She takes off her blouse, revealing a… Scar. Of sorts. On the left side of her abdomen.

“Tell them what happened,” Scorpia commands.

“When I got impaled during the battle, one of the skewers hit me, right here.”

Entrapta pokes the anomaly. It has a texture like bark, but is entirely flexible. “How do you feel?” she asks. “What happened?”

“Fine. For a moment and I thought I was going to die, then… I don’t know; I had a revelation. Suddenly I could shift my own body as if it was a plant. Then I repaired my armor, and I thought that was that. I didn’t even notice until we —” She looks at Scorpia and blushes “— Until Scorpia undressed me.”

Entrapta runs through a routine examination: first, vitals. She puts the clamp on Perfuma’s finger, and looks at the holographic screen, where an alert pops up immediately. “That can’t be right.” She puts a finger to Perfuma’s neck, on her carotid artery, then counts by a stopwatch.

“Your heart rate is about half what it should be. Thirty beats per minute.”

“Oh,” Perfuma says.

Catra takes her hand, and grabs an examination flashlight, presses it against the webbing between her thumb and index finger. The light comes through green-tinted. “Your blood is green.”

“Oh no,” Perfuma says. “I know what it is!”

“What?” Entrapta asks.

“I’m turning into a dryad!” Perfuma exclaims with some distress.

There’s a moment of stunned silence.

“What’s a dryad?” Catra asks. “Is that bad?” Adora asks.

“They’re a kind of feral forest nymph,” Scorpia says.

Perfuma nods. “They are known to kill cattle, destroy lodges, hunt people for sport, seduce anyone they take a liking to, or if they can’t, they are known to commit rape. My… My sire was a dryad. She was one of the nice ones, and as far as I can tell everyone except my mother thought she was about as pleasant as a rosebush.”

“You’re worried you’ll turn into that?” Scorpia asks, she takes a seat on the examination bed next to Perfuma.

Perfuma nods. Her lip quivers.

“Well, that’s bullshit,” Scorpia says. “I believe in you.”

“But—”

“If anything happens we have Catra and Adora to work their weird light-shadow magic on you.”

Hordak clears his throat from over in the corner. “If I may,” he says. “Back during my collaboration with the two great Scorpioni houses Fright and Dread, we captured and examined several nymphs and other faerie. In my personal estimation, the cause for the callousness of such creatures is not an inborn defect, but a lack of proper socialization.”

“Meaning?” Scorpia asks.

“The Princess Perfuma will, provided her upbringing is sound, remain sane and amicable. Probably.”

Perfuma looks at Hordak, unsure of whether to believe him.

“And if not, I am sure the combined might of Entrapta, the resistance’s expert sorcerers, She-Ra, _and_ Melog can work something out. You are not alone in this struggle, Princess.”

Perfuma nods. “That… Is a strangely reassuring way of viewing the problem.”

“I am merely speaking from experience: relying on others for the preservation of one’s health and sanity is an essential survival skill.”

Everyone else looks at him as well.

“Is there something on my face?” Hordak asks.

“Hey, Captain, do you think we need an infirmarist to relieve the head engineer?” Catra asks.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That sure was a seven-chapter action scene, huh?


	11. We Won, What's Next?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cw: drinking, recreational drug use

Night has fallen over the Whispering Woods; which is what Refuge III uses as reference. The city is a collection of smaller natural caves and artificial cthonic spaces, connected by permanent portals. The floor-space is overall larger than Refuge II, but it feels more cramped. There is no artificial sky made of reflective panels, and a stand-in for sunlight in the form of a great big lamp.

Just corridors and halls; ventilation ducts and plumbing. But on the upside, everyone made it out. Refuge, collectively, is done losing people. That is the spirit, this evening.

The Swift Wind links up to the network of portals, and the cargo bay becomes temporarily a small plaza of sorts.

Of course, there’s a party. The Starlight Brigade has brought with it real power; and they seemingly have turned the tide. Not many people are invested in the lives of the movers and shakers, but it is good news to hear that there is no longer any threat of the Runestones being turned on the resistance.

What goes unsaid of course, is that dark magic is still on the table; and the reports of the triple-clones remain strictly classified.

The jovial mood doesn’t quite penetrate the corridors of the Swift Wind. One does not simply fight three battles in a day and then party all night. At least no-one on the team died.

One of the larger areas of Refuge III is some kind of long-defunct production floor of two acres with thirty-two feet high ceiling. That is where the security council has set up the headquarters, mirroring closely the offices they had in the dome. All the paperwork was computerized, and can fit in a single communicator.

Adora sits on the roof of the auditorium, there, bottle in hand, feet dangling, thinking over the events of the day. She’s not physically tired, despite having been put through quite a wringer; but she is mentally reaching her limit.

Down below, music plays and people dance.

“Thought I’d find you on a roof somewhere,” Catra says, dumping down beside her. “Whacha got there?”

Adora turns the bottle over. It’s the ‘fabricator-beer’ she designed in her free time while they were out in space.

Catra has two thirds of a bottle of fortified wine of questionable quality. They trade.

She takes out a cigar-looking implement and lights it. Drawing deep, and flubbing the exhale with a coughing fit. She hands it off to Adora, who takes a drag. It’s not tobacco; but sweeter and more aromatic. Not to her liking. She coughs.

“Perfuma got me this,” Catra says. “Supposedly it’s better for you than tobacco. Also more fun.”

“Never really liked smoking,” Adora says.

Catra takes another drag, and exhales a cloud of smoke so dark it might come from the chimney of a coal burner. In the dimmed artificial light, it twists and roils, without dissipating.

“I thought it’d be… I don’t know, more _fun_ to get a win,” Adora says.

“Yeah. Why do you think I’m smoking strange plants?”

Adora holds out her bottle, and Catra clinks hers to it. “To the resistance.”

“But we _did_ get a win,” Catra says. “Give it time. Sleep on it. Let it… _Ferment._ ”

“When did you get wise?”

Catra giggles. “Me? Never.”

“Thanks for helping me, with the whole starlight thing,” Adora says.

“Pay me back by fixing me if I ever dip too deep into my darkness,” Catra says. She takes a swig of the beer, and makes a sound of appreciation that warms Adora a little inside. “Say, that kid; Splashy and Moustache’s daughter.”

“Splashy and Moustache? Mermista and Sea Hawk?”

“Hey, finding good annoying nicknames for people is hard work. Their daughter, she’s named Adora?”

Adora smiles. “She is. I saved her life.” She gestures to her own upper lip.

Catra looks at her. “Ah, and they named her after you in tribute?”

Adora nods, smiling; genuinely smiling. Catra’s heart beats a little quicker.

“That little girl got her mother back because of you, Catra,” Adora says.

* * *

Adora wakes up hung over, and _incredibly_ well-rested. A wave of starlight clears the morning blues, and as she shifts her posture, she remembers that she’s not lying in bed.

She’s lying on Catra, who turned into her beastly four-legged war form, curled up and fell asleep in a corner. They never even made it back to the Swift Wind.

Catra breathes slowly under her, still asleep, and Adora checks the time; almost noon.

She reaches over and ruffles Catra’s black mane. “Wake up, sleepy head, we missed breakfast.”

Catra makes a deep purring sound, and opens her yellow eye, looking at Adora for a beat, then yawns with a disturbing display of teeth. “Did you sleep well?”

“Fantastic. Thanks.”

“Then get off, I need to stretch.”

Adora rolls off, landing on the hard floor, barefoot. Catra’s beastly form flows into shadow, and coalesces into her humanoid form. She rolls her bare shoulders, and stretches high, and then bends forward at the hip until she can hug her legs. Every joint on her crackles with the motions.

She manifests her rash guard sleeves. Dirty and scuffed. “I think some laundry is in order, don’t you?”

Adora takes her eyes of Catra, to inspect the inch-wide hole in her suit, where she got impaled. The dried blood stains the white fabric. “I think I need new clothes, full stop.”

Catra tosses her the wedge-heel boots and red jacket. “Get dressed.” Then she manifests them a portal back to the Swift Wind.

Damara is there, in the cargo bay, almost waiting for them.

“You two need to sleep with your communicators closer by.”

Two communicators manifest in Catra’s hand, out of darkness, and she tosses one to Adora. The log of incoming communications shows several missed calls.

“I take full responsibility. What did we miss?” Adora asks.

Damara looks at her. The snorts. “What, do you think I’m going to _punish_ you?” Then her smile falls away. She looks at Catra, who is not showing much in the way of emotion. “Oh wow. You do. Okay!” She claps her hands. “I am _not_ Shadow Weaver, girls. What I _meant_ is: you missed the opportunity to decide whether to attend the late-morning security meeting. You didn’t miss much, it was just a debrief. I hope you slept well?”

“We did,” Catra says.

Damara smiles. “There might be time for you to go find the others for a spot of lunch out in town.”

Adora looks at her mother. “Are you all alone here? You seem a little high strung.”

Damara pauses. “Entrapta and Hordak are out, discussing their relationship in private. I’m— I should be better than this, but I am jealous,” Damara says. “And terrified by the uncertainty.”

“Ah, workplace romance,” Catra notes. “And what happens when it falls apart.”

Adora elbows her, hard.

“Hologram telepresence isn’t exactly my style; I tried,” Damara adds.

Catra looks at Adora. “What do you say, wanna perform a miracle before lunch?”

Damara is about to protest.

“Listen, Quartermaster, do you want to be _here_ and stew? Or do you want to go out, and actually hang out with your Chief Engineer? And, on a more serious note; what happens to you if Swift Wind gets shot down?”

* * *

The thing about thousand-year-old mummified corpses is that they don’t decay. Sealed in an air-tight coffin, Mara’s earthly remains have been tugging along in long-term storage for their entire trip through the galaxy.

Damara isn’t entirely sure how to feel about this. “Are you sure it isn’t going to sever my connection to the ship?”

Adora looks at Catra, wondering the same thing.

“I re-made Cometa’s connection to her Runestone,” Catra notes. “And I made Halcyon out of the scraps from when Adora broke the Aegis. I put my own severed hand to good use. I don’t restore things that used to be, I turn them into new better things.”

She holds out a hand to Adora.

“If you’re sure about this,” Adora says.

Adora puts a hand on the corpse, Catra takes Damara by the hand.

There is twin lights in the dark void, like the birth of a binary star.

* * *

Damara is very happy that she doesn’t wake up in a coffin. “Did it even work?”

The coffin before them is empty.

“Only one way to find out,” Adora says.

Catra conjures a portal with a gesture. She and Adora step through.

Damara tentatively takes a step through the portal, onto what can generously be described as the streets of Refuge III. The little holographic info panels that follows her everywhere, float along.

“I can’t hover here,” she notes. “Or translocate.” She pops like a soap bubble, then re-emerges from the portal. “Except back.”

“Good to know,” Adora says. “Now let’s go, I’m _starving._ ”

* * *

There’s a food court of sorts, set up in the same physical space as the security council’s headquarters. There’s a lot of personnel to serve, and cooked meals are better for morale than fabricator-made. The whole operation is a testament to successful adoption of drone labor: a few master cooks, aided by a couple of working drones not unlike Emily from the Swift Wind, and self-directed hover-trays for table service, accomplishes what would otherwise take a team of twenty.

The food is simple and filling, and the price is low. The three cooks manning the kitchen has a _lot_ of spending money.

Part of the court is ‘indoors’ and part of it is under the bare ceiling of the production hall, in the gentle breeze of the ventilation system.

Damara spots Entrapta and Hordak sitting by one of the outside tables. “There they are,” she says quietly. “I— I shouldn’t.”

The two are discussing something, animatedly. There’s a tablet on the table, and Entrapta is using her omnitool as a visual aide.

“I think they are discussing spaceship design?” Catra says.

“Spacecraft,” Damara corrects, worry creeping into her voice. “Do you think—”

“That they are going to build a ship for themselves and what, _leave you?_ ” Catra completes. “Are you _daft?_ That’s _Hordak,_ if I know him right, he wants to make a _fleet._ ”

“Void.”

“Go talk to them, mom,” Adora says. “Entrapta could use a chaperone.”

Damara takes a deep breath and heads off.

“I swear, half of captaining is just managing the interpersonal relationships of the crew,” Adora says.

“And what, sitting in your chair and giving orders is the other half?” Catra jeers.

There’s other familiar faces among the diners. Glimmer spots them and waves, but she is sitting with her mother and Bow, with clean plates on the table, and after-lunch tea served.

Adora waves back.

“Let’s head inside,” Catra suggests. “See if there’s a table there.”

They do. The dining space under the carbon-fiber strut-support beige mineral-foam roof is tastefully decorated with real potted greenery, and the kitchen is open.

Catra spots a table, and they take a seat. Adora orders a hearty brunch with her communicator — thank the stars they server brunch at noon — and they wait.

“Do you think we should have changed before coming here?” Adora asks, picking up the earlier topic of the fact that they both look like crap.

“Nah, it contributes to the image,” Catra says. She looks over Adora shoulder. “Looks like you’ve got a fan.”

“Uh, excuse me, She-Ra?”

Adora turns to look and sees a girl approaching, perhaps ten years old. She’s a grey-furred caniform, in a blue one-piece dress. By a table a little ways away sits a woman of familial resemblance to the girl, watching with a smile.

“Hello,” Adora says with a smile, pushing her sullen demeanor away.

“Can I have your autograph?” She holds up a napkin and a pen.

Adora holds out a hand, and conjures a knife-sized blade. She takes the napkin and skillfully wraps the narrow blade in it, handing it to the girl. “Get your mother to help find a sheath for that, okay?”

The girl’s eyes go big as saucers, then she smiles, beaming, and bounds back to her mother without even saying thanks.

“Are you just giving those out now?” Catra asks.

“Yeah. What of it?” Adora asks back.

“Oops,” Catra says. “Trouble!”

“Excuse me,” a woman’s voice sounds behind Adora. Adora turns to see the mother of the girl standing there, tail swishing from side to side. The girl is sitting by the table, looking dejected.

“Yes?”

“What makes you think it’s appropriate to give children _knives?_ Couldn’t you just have signed your name or something?” She hands Adora back the knife.

Adora looks at it. “Ma’am, I can’t take that. It’s not yours to give.”

“Knives aren’t _toys._ ”

“No,” Adora says, “they are _tools._ So do your duty as a mother and teach her how to use it.”

“And what, _your_ mother did that?” The woman asks.

Adora grits her teeth.

Catra draws breath in through her teeth. “Lady, don’t say that kind of crap to She-Ra, okay? I can tell you, we both learned knife-skills from Horde drill instructors, because both of us are fucking war orphans. Be a little sensitive, will you? There’s a war going on. Teach your sweet kid how to defend herself, that’s the least you can do.”

The caniform woman frowns, then turns and walks back to her table.

A trio of hover trays approach with their food.

“Thanks,” Adora says.

“Don’t mention it,” Catra replies.

They eat, thankfully undisturbed. Pancakes and sausages, hash browns and eggs. They share the fruit salad for a palate cleanser after all the salt, grease, carbs, and protein. Catra orders coffee.

“Hello, Girls.”

“Go away Shadow Weaver,” Catra says without even looking up.

Shadow Weaver doesn’t. She looks to Adora. “I was hoping to extend and invitation to the two of you, myself and the archaeology team have a strategy meeting you might want to sit in on.”

It is strange to see her not wear a mask, dress sensibly, and have her hair done up.

“Archaeology team?”

“Messers George and Lance of the Hidden Library, your grandmother, Myself, and Castaspella if she isn’t off honeymooning with that floozy Guard Captain.”

Adora blinks. “Castaspella and _Juliet?_ ”

“Indeed. That woman has predictable tastes, and those include pointed ears.” Shadow Weaver flicks her own. “I’m _glad_ that is your takeaway from what I just said.”

“So you two dated back when you were at Mystacor?” Adora asks, leaning back with a smug raised eyebrow.

Shadow Weaver sighs. “Yes, Adora. I mentored Micah; she was young and stupid, I took advantage for my own amusement. Happy now?” She takes out her communicator, and brings up her calendar.

“We’ll be there,” Adora says, taking out her own communicator and bumping it to Shadow Weaver’s, transferring the appointment note.

Shadow Weaver turns and leaves without so much as a goodbye.

* * *

The archaeology team meets in a totally different locale, almost but not quite on the other side of the planet; so only a brisk five minute walk away.

Adora and Catra has had the chance to return to the Swift Wind and freshen up, and so arrive looking and feeling a few notches above just-returned-from-active-battlefield.

The venue is the _new_ new library. This time they aren’t bothering with physical books, apart from the ones that can magically rearrange their content and become _any_ book, provided the text is available as raw data.

“Ah, the women of the hour,” Lance greets the two of them as they enter. The round table with the inlaid hologram projector has been cleared. Around it sit he, George, Razz, Shadow Weaver, Castaspella, Angella, Glimmer, and Damara.

“Please,” Adora says, taking a seat. “I’m just doing what I can.”

“False modesty, that,” Catra says. “Please, heap praise on us.”

Adora glares at her.

Catra sticks out her tongue.

“Very well,” Shadow Weaver says. "Thank you for coming, the two of you. We have some important information to share. Prime’s ultimate goal is to obtain the power of the Heart of Etheria, and probably use it to destroy the entire universe.

"Now that the resistance is in no immediate danger of attack from Runestone wielders, the security council is turning its efforts on longer-term issues, among others actually somehow winning this hopeless war, and also ideally preventing universal destruction.

“Which is to say, we have resources to draw on, besides the already formidable capabilities of the people present at this table.”

She pauses to collect some notes, and squints at them for a moment. Then she takes out a pair of reading glasses. “The time for vanity is over,” she mutters, as she puts them on. “What myself, Castaspella, and King Micah have uncovered in our investigations of Mystacor, is a large catalogue of First-Ones’ writing, part of it thought previously to be ornamental, part of it from preserved ancient scrolls that predate the Levitation.”

“Pardon my interruption,” Damara says, “can someone give me — and I assume others around the table a history lesson? What’s this ‘levitation’ event?”

“Mystacor used to be an archipelago off the coast of what was then the Orcish kingdoms, today the Crimson Wastes,” Shadow Weaver says. "Five hundred years ago, the council of sorcerers levitated the islands into the sky, and crossed the ocean, eventually anchoring in their present-day location in the northern Brightmoon Peninsula. This actually ties into our findings:

"We have discovered _how_ this feat was accomplished. It was previously believed that the creation of the wastes was a spell cast as an act of war, but in fact it was merely collateral for the spell’s true effect, which was the creation of a purely sorcerous analogue to the hover engines found aboard the Swift Wind, which is what enables to mountains to fly.

“Mystacor itself, organizationally, is almost as old as the fall of the First Ones. This has been believed coincidental, but now we _know_ it was by design. The Mystacorean archipelago was indeed the final resting place of the Swift Wind’s sister craft, and the remnants of the Grayskull Squadron.”

“Oh,” Damara says.

Shadow Weaver nods. “Serenia herself founded it. With her crew, they managed first to use sorcerous and technological means to redirect the flow of power into the Heart of Etheria, and use this vast influx of energy in a dark ritual to cast a global spell of obliviation, causing everyone on Etheria to forget. It is difficult to know exactly _what_ was forgotten, but evidence suggests the use of First-Ones’ technology, literacy of their writing, the name of their civilization, and purpose of their presence on Etheria. Of course there was collateral damage, and much else was forgotten by native Etherians and innocent citizens in the process.”

“Eternians of Grayskull,” Adora says. “ _We_ call them First-Ones.”

“Indeed,” Shadow Weaver says. "Notably, the Grayskull Squadron shielded themselves from the effect of the spell, and used their superior knowledge to engineer an organization that could house and perpetuate their plans. The sorcery college of Mystacor.

“As to what that plan is: Serenia foresaw that the mere existence of the Heart of Etheria meant that it could be used—”

“We all foresaw that,” Damara says.

“— and you, Mara, gave your life to prevent your own empire from claiming it, buying time for Serenia to put her plan in action.”

“Damara,” Damara corrects.

“Ah, but of course; pardon me.”

Shadow Weaver pages through her notes. “Serenia and her people worked on the other half of that plan: destroying the Heart of Etheria. They had several problems which we do not, and vice versa. Among others, they had to somehow circumvent Light Hope’s control of the chtonic infrastructure; today Light Hope is dead. They did not have Horde Prime wishing to take it for himself; we do.”

“If I may,” Catra says, “we already know how to destroy it.”

Some heads turn.

“Krytis was in the same boat as Etheria. When we went there and encountered Melog, we helped them destroy it.”

“How?” Shadoww Weaver asks.

Catra looks at Adora. Adora manifests Parabell. “Stabbing it,” she says.

“Ah, about that,” Damara says, "telemetry from the incident indicates that the destruction of the Heart of Etheria caused a very high level of seismic activity — remember the volcanic eruptions? The Heart of Krytis was damaged, and leaking power. Its reserves of magic were severely limited, so being unleashed only caused an upset.

“If we forcibly destroy the Heart of Etheria… The energy release will at the most beneficent estimate exceed the gravitational binding energy of Etheria itself by fifteen orders of magnitude. The resulting blast would destroy _Sola._ ”

“And what about the worst-case?” Catra says.

“Basically the same as if Horde Prime uses it to destroy the entire universe,” Damara says. “Maybe even somehow worse, if that is possible; but at that point, it is metaphysics and conjecture.”

“Indeed,” Shadow Weaver says, “Serenia realized this as well. The insurmountable problem of the two, for the Grayskull Squadron turned out to be Light Hope, in the end.”

“You mean they found a way to destroy the Heart of Etheria without collateral damage?” Adora asks.

“Yes. I even know how it works, and approximately where to find it”

“So,” Catra says, “what _is_ the anti-Heart gizmo?”

“A spell,” Shadow Weaver says. "Serenia refers to it as the ‘Failsafe’, in that it causes the Heart to fail safely, rather than destructively. The Heart is powered by the magic of its host planet; this relationship can be reversed.

“The spell is described as embodied in an artifact hidden in the depths of Mystacor, and reason would indicate that it is under heavy warding and misdirection, since nobody has stumbled upon it.”

Adora nods. “So we find the artifact, and then we use it.”

Shadow Weaver shakes her head. "The artifact is designed to _impart_ the spell onto a living mind and soul, who must then carry it to the Heart, physically. This was why Light Hope was an obstacle, the reversal has to be done with direct physical access.

“Additionally, the one who carries the Failsafe to the Heart becomes the conduit for the entirety of the Heart’s power, while the reversal happens. I don’t think I can underline enough how this will be _invariably_ fatal; Serenia herself describes the role as that of a ‘sacrifice’ and underlines additionally how if the sacrifice dies before the process is complete, another sacrifice must be on hand to take the burden, or the reversal will fail to take.”

There’s a moment of dead silence.

“So you’re saying,” Angella says, “that an unknown number of people will have to give their lives in order to destroy the Heart.”

“Yes and no. Serenia conjectured that powerful individuals would be able to hold out longer. This was partly whey she established the sorcery college: sorcerers would probably be more capable of shouldering the burden. Runestone wielders even more so, and most of all…” She looks to Adora. “She-Ra herself.”

Catra puts her hand over Adora’s mouth. “Don’t you dare complete that sentence,” she says.

“ _Mi amn maif amymim,_ ” Adora mumbles though her hand.

“You were _thinking_ it!”

“It might even be survivable,” Shadow Weaver adds.

“Shut up,” Catra says, “It might also not. In any case I motion that we discuss this in detail before proposing solution, that we bring it up with the security council.”

Shadow Weaver nods. “There is also a separate problem: gaining access to the artifact in the first place. It is located in Mystacor, which is currently under Horde occupation… And Micah knows this as well. He might not know in complete detail, its purpose, but he knows it is a goal of ours. Additionally he might be there anyway, making use of the facilities to his own dark ends.”

“Then we should _definitely_ go,” Glimmer says. “It’s the perfect opportunity to strike two birds with one stone: capture my dad, and access the artifact.”

“ _Again,_ ” Catra says. “We need to bring this up with the _security council._ ”

* * *

“You haven’t said anything since the meeting,” Adora notes, at dinner. Re-heated leftovers, and vegetable stir-fry. Half of the crew is out on R&R the ones left are the kind that eat ‘dinner’ consisting of MRE slurry through a straw while working, or not at all.

They’ve spent the day mostly recuperating. Adora has been receiving She-Ra fan mail, filing paperwork, reading over a proposal draft from Entrapta, co-authored by Hordak, to establish a resistance space presence, an ‘Astry,’ which in turn required her getting up to speed with the resistance operations.

Catra has spent the time in the workshop and armoury.

“Been thinking,” Catra says.

“In the workshop?” Adora asks.

“Okay, I did some actual work,” Catra says. “Remember my whole floating telekinetic hand thing?”

“Oh yeah, you made that out of your actual amputated hand. That was gross and unsettling.”

“I used it to choke Micah, and he managed to take it from me; or rather I had to leave it with him when he brought the library down on our heads,” Catra says.

“Oh.”

“But! Turns out I had another discarded limb lying around, down in storage; my old cybernetic arm, then one that got busted when you healed me. I did some repairs on it, and got it working again, so now my Backhand is back in action.”

A floating hand made of darkness manifests in front of Catra, waving at Adora.

“Good. Great!” Adora says. “You managed to repair First-Ones’ tech?”

“We’re on a First-Ones’ ship with First-Ones’ tools, manuals, guide-books, the works. I just followed a step-by-step.”

“Oh. Well, I answered _fan mail,_ if you can believe it,” Adora says.

“I sure can. You’re the big shiny heroine, people adore you. It’s even in your name,” Catra points out. Her smile falters, and she resumes eating.

“You were thinking about the meeting, weren’t you?” Adora asks.

Catra nods. “I hate it. Working with her. She’s so… I mean, all ‘for the greater good’ and ‘just the facts’ and all of it seems so disingenuous when you know who she really is.”

Adora nods. “I know how you feel.”

“I bet the only real reason she’s in it with the resistance is because she can’t rule the world if Prime destroys it.”

Adora can’t seem to earnestly disagree with that sentiment.

“But that’s not what I’m angry about.” Catra looks at Adora. “You were going to say ‘I’ll do it,’ or something to that end.”

Adora nods.

“A half formed plan, the universe is in jeopardy, and you are ready to just sacrifice yourself for the greater good.”

“That’s what it means to be a hero, isn’t it?” Adora says.

Catra shakes her head. “You don’t win a war by dying for your cause, you win by making your enemy die for theirs. There are no heroes in war; it’s just a lie we tell to get suckers to enlist.”

Adora looks down.

Catra reaches over the table and lifts her chin up.

“We are going to figure this one out, and then we are going to accomplish our objective without compromising key assets. Just like in the textbooks.”

“Yeah,” Adora says. “Yeah, okay.”

* * *

The next morning, they don’t miss the security council meeting.

The auditorium in Refuge III is a virtual copy of the one in the dome.

Peekablue is the one giving the presentation of the new intel, using a hologram display, and some kind of hand-held controller.

“Hello, everyone,” he says. “We had a major win yesterday, and today the other boot drops.”

There’s a nervous murmur.

"Forgive my theatrics; but it really has. In the early hours of this morning, the Horde has begun mass landings of clones and materiel, but not in a way we expected. It is not a ground invasion like we feared. They are landing in the Southern Reach. We are monitoring the situation by spy-drones and crying spells as we speak.

“Most of you will probably have questions about why what appears to be the main Horde landing, is taking place on the uninhabited permanently frozen southern continent. I don’t know. But it _cannot_ be good news. I confess that I am still not operating on full capacity with regards to my Runestone abilities, so I would like to call for a round of open suggestion. Conjecture is welcome. For now, let’s take ten minutes to discuss.”

* * *

Catra gets out of her seat.

“Where are you—” Adora says, but she is already slipping away. Nimble and quick for the fact that she is built the same as Adora, and rises almost a head above the crowd. “Get Hordak!” she calls back to Adora.

Glimmer and Angella are sitting next to one another, further down front, discussing something.

“Sparkles, I need your input on something,” she says.

Glimmer is out of her seat immediately, and Catra takes her by the hand, leading her through the crowd — people are forming little clusters.

Catra has no delusions about them being the only ones who has a grip on the situation; not when everyone else has had two weeks of intelligence reports with Peekablue. But they are the only ones who has met Horde Prime face-to-face.

They join up with Adora and Hordak.

“What is it you wish to discuss, Catra?” Hordak says.

Catra looks at Adora. “Do you remember what he said when I was sanitized?”

Adora nods. “Better than I would prefer.”

“He said…” Catra closes her eyes. “He said that She-Ra may be dead, but the Heart still exists. If the First-Ones had any sense, they wouldn’t design it so compromising a single personnel asset could compromise the whole weapons system. He planned to salvage what he could and adapt replacements of his own tech for everything else.”

“You’re thinking he is going to do that from the Southern Reach,” Adora says.

Catra nods. She looks at Hordak. “What do you think? You know him better than we do, I hope.”

Hordak nods. “He kept his plans hidden from me, but… The galactic Horde has no problem operating in harsh climates. He will likely use the remoteness of the locale to heavily fortify before we have a chance to respond. As for the technological matter, Entrapta, Damara, and the archaeological team are better suited to answering that.”

“You know,” Adora says, “Light Hope knew all about the Heart — if she has some kind of memory array like the one Entrapta made for Damara, we might be able to salvage it. Get some intel that way.”

Glimmer points to her. “That is an actionable suggestion. Hordak, can you bring that up with Entrapta, see if you can come up with something?”

Hordak nods. “Of course.”

Catra looks at Adora. “It also sounds like Peekablue needs some help getting his mojo back.”

“Yeah,” Adora concurs. “Also, you need to subscribe to whatever intelligence grapevine he’s getting his reports from. I want my intelligence analyst to tell me these things before I sit down for a briefing.”

“We need to go to Mystacor,” Glimmer says. “I know you two don’t like the idea, but Shadow Weaver said the spell only activates at the Heart. If we get some willing sacrifice candidates, they can just be on standby, in case the worst happens.”

“If my opinion is relevant here, I concur,” Hordak says. “Contingencies is how one prevails in asymmetric conflict.”


	12. Destination, Mystacor

There’s some hustle and bustle going on, as people find their seats again, a few eager to share their insights.

Adora is among them, and raises a hand.

“She-Ra, what do you have for us?” Peekablue asks.

“We have a hypothesis,” she says. “One of Horde Prime’s known objectives is obtaining the Heart of Etheria weapon. In fact that is probably his ultimate goal. The landing at the Southern Reach could very well be staging for an attempt at accessing the cthonic infrastructure with him dictating the terms of engagement.”

There’s a few murmurs around the hall.

“Pardon me,” Sweet Bee says, “but isn’t there a gigantic shaft that leads directly to the Heart located near the Crystal Castle?”

Adora looks at Catra.

“He won’t use that,” Catra says. “Because he knows we know it exists, and we have Huntara who can collapse the whole thing. What I think he’s aiming for is digging too many redundant shafts for us to collapse them all.”

There’s some other proposals as to what Horde Prime’s intentions are with the Southern Reach, but none of them are as tantalizingly harmonious with his known goals as theirs.

And then the discussion of what to do about it begins. There’s a plethora of suggestions, and almost all of them would require more manpower than the resistance can muster at present.

The session comes to an end, and the auditorium begins emptying.

“I was kind of waiting for you to bring up the Failsafe plan?” Adora asks Catra.

Catra shakes her head. “What’s there to bring up? ‘Yeah, if we could just get some volunteers for human sacrifice that’d be great,’ or what?”

“But you said—”

“I said that to get you and Shadow Weaver away from each other so I could talk some sense into you.” She stands. “Peekablue is hanging around to answer questions, let’s go talk to him.”

Adora heads to the lectern, and Catra follows on her heels.

Peekablue converses with a few people, some of which Adora and Catra recognize as Brightmoon and Horde brass, respectively.

“Peekablue,” Adora says.

“She-Ra, Melog, how ever may I be of service? It was quite some insight, I find myself inclined to believe you.”

“Yeah, about that,” Adora says. “We want to help you get the full power of the Hyperlens back. I assume since it hasn’t happened yet, you and Spinnerella have run into some trouble?”

Peekablue seems enthused at the prospect. “We have; she is… Unwell. If you can spare the time, what do you need from me?”

Adora looks at Catra.

“You and her in the same room,” Catra says.

* * *

That turns out to be the problem. Spinnerella hasn’t gotten out of bed for two days now.

They show up at Netossa and Spinnerella’s small standard apartment in a re-purposed water cistern a half mile below the capital of Snows. Adora, Catra, and Peekablue.

Peekablue knocks on the door, gently.

Netossa answers; for once in her life dressed in something that can be construed as leisurewear. Her hair is tied back, and she looks worried and tired.

“Hi,” she says. “Come in.”

She shows them inside; and it’s the same as every other standard apartment. They haven’t had time to decorate and personalize the space. In the corner the pull-out-couch is a bed, and Spinnerella is lying there, curled up, facing the wall.

“What happened?” Peekablue asks, quietly.

“I don’t know,” Netossa says. “Everything was fine for a few hours, then she got in a low mood and didn’t want to talk about why. She’s not sleeping, I can barely get her to eat anything.”

Peekablue frowns. “She is not physically ill, I can tell that much,” he says.

Catra puts a hand on his shoulder. “You never loose sleep over what you did when you were sanitized?” she asks him.

He shakes his head. “Since I became a Wielder I have become very well accustomed to facing and living with the consequences of my actions. It is overwhelming to see clearly the evil wrought by one’s own hands; but the Hyperlens provides anyway. A cruel stone, that.”

Catra pats him on the shoulder. “May I?” she asks Netossa.

Netossa nods.

Catra heads over to the bed and lets herself fall onto the mattress.

“Hey.”

No reply from Spinnerella.

“How does it feel to be a villain?”

Netossa is about to protest, but Adora holds her back.

Spinnerella curls up tighter, pulling the blanket over her head.

“Believe me, I have some experience. You’re responsible for what, a couple of thousand sanitized when you led Prime to Refuge I?”

Catra rolls onto her side. "And to think; they aren’t even dead. I’m sure you killed more Horde soldiers back before the Skybreak, than died in the battle of Refuge I; why aren’t you crying about those?

"I once ordered the abduction of an entire city full of people, and left them to rot in a prison camp for a few weeks, knowing the infirm and the elderly wouldn’t survive. And then I activated a portal which I _knew_ wasn’t safe — you only live once, right? — And like twenty million people just disappeared off the face of Etheria.

“I guess my point is: you can stop feeling bad about what you did. We’re going to get Peekablue to take back that shard of power you hold, and you can go back to living in blissful ignorance. Sounds good?”

No reply.

Catra pats her on the shoulder. “Great. Good talk. Netossa, get her to sit.”

Netossa comes over and gently coaxes Spinnerella up to sit. She’s wearing a purple nightgown, and her hair is greasy.

“On the edge of the bed, please.”

“Come one, Spinny, we’re trying to help you,” Netossa says.

Spinnerella mutters something, and Netossa leans in to hear. “Yeah, but you know I’m a fool, right?” she replies with a little smile.

Spinnerella’s movements are slow and almost languid, as she swings her legs over the edge of the couch, and slides over to sit by the edge.

Catra waves Adora and Peekablue over, and stands on Spinnerella’s left. Adora takes up position on her right, and the four of them link hands.

“Ready?” Adora asks.

“Are you sure this will work?” Peekablue asks.

“Not even the slightest,” Catra says, “but it has worked every time so far.”

From Catra, Darkness. From Adora, Light. The entire room is in two complementary halves.

Netossa opens her eyes, to see that nothing has visibly changed.

Then Peekablue perks up. “A- _ha!_ ” he exclaims. “Oh, I have a _lot_ of lost time to make up for now. Princess Spinnerella, you have my well wishes — Princess Netossa, likewise.”

“Is— is she going to be all right?”

Peekablue looks at Spinnerella. “Wounds always leave scars,” he says, cryptically, “but we have stemmed the bleeding, so to speak. In time…”

Then he turns and heads for the door.

Netossa darts over, past Adora, and kneels to look at Spinnerella. For the first time since yesterday evening, her face betrays an emotion. Pain. It is a welcome change from apathetic neutrality. She pulls her wife into a hug.

Spinnerella reaches around her back with a weak hand. “ _I’m tired,_ ” she mutters.

“Let’s get you lying down again,” Netossa replies, and helps her back where she was just lying. This time, however, Spinnerella closes her eyes and falls asleep almost immediately. Netossa sits beside her.

Netossa draws a shaky breath and wipes a tear away. She looks up at Adora and Catra. “Thank you, you two. I— I’ve been so worried. I didn’t know what to do.”

Adora crouches down beside the bed. “We’re here to help,” she says. “And we need you two in fighting order. You’re a valuable member of the resistance.”

Netossa nods.

“How long do you think you need?” Adora asks.

Netossa shakes her head. “I can’t say.”

“What about just you? I know it’s harsh, but we’re planning an operation in Mystacor, and we could use more people with home-field advantage there.”

Netossa takes a deep breath. “Give me a day to assess her situation, then I’ll see if I can get someone else to look after her while we prep.”

Adora looks at Catra. “Two days, then.”

* * *

The Swift Wind hides underwater, invisible, a hundred fathoms below an anonymous patch of ocean. The view from the control center is one of twilit serene blue.

“So, what are you planning?” Catra asks.

“We’re going there to grab the artifact itself,” Adora says. “It’s the only sane course of action. It is situated in enemy territory, so we secure and relocate. That way we can—” she pauses.

“Produce as many sacrifices as we need,” Catra completes.

“Yeah.”

Catra’s communicator chimes. She picks it up from the console, where it lies face-down.

“Hm. Update from Peekablue,” Catra notes. “We were right about why he’s landing at the Southern Reach. It’s to drill.”

“Crap. That does step up our time-table.”

Catra nods. “So, personnel: Netossa, Castaspella, and Shadow Weaver are all familiar with the place. Who else?”

“I don’t think we can convince Glimmer _not_ to go, it’s been eating her that she wasn’t there to assist Team Dark,” Adora says. “And again, she might be useful at stalling Micah with her mere presence.”

Catra nods.

“As for the objective, we need logistics and the worst part is we don’t know exactly what we’re moving. It could be _huge._ Like, waygate-sized,” Adora says.

“Let’s operate on that assumption; worst case scenario. If it’s any smaller, there’s no kill like overkill; if I can physically lift it, it’ll fit in my bag of tricks and we just grab it and run.”

“What’s your deadlift?”

“Somewhere just shy of two tons, without shapeshifting.”

Adora whistles. “I can only do a ton and a half, and that’s _with_ starlight.”

Catra smiles, and flexes her bare left arm; it is _impressively_ muscular. “I told you I’d surpass you one day.”

Adora smiles, and returns to the topic at hand: “Deadlifts aside, neither of us compare to Huntara and Cometa. They can move basically anything related to earth and metal, hell, even Netossa, Perfuma, or Glimmer in a pinch can out-do us when it comes to moving bulk.”

“We could get a technological solution,” Catra says. “I’ll bring along some heavy-duty equipment.”

“It would be easiest if we could just open a big portal and wheel it out, yeah,” Adora concurs.

Catra frowns, rubbing her chin.

“Brightmoon had something that blocked off portals,” she notes, “I’m saying that because if we can’t portal this hole affair becomes a _lot_ more complicated to pull off.”

“Yeah, I hear you,” Adora. “It was a spell of some kind which Glimmer concocted with the Brightmoon sorcerers and Shadow Weaver.”

“We need to run that by Peekablue,” Catra says, “or run a volume mapping with a portal device; which will give the gig away.”

“And if we can’t portal, Huntara and/or Cometa become all the more vital in opening up an extraction channel through Mystacor’s superstructure, so we can air-lift it out with the Swift Wind,” Adora says.

“We should have some tech standing by — if Entrapta’s unavailable, maybe Kyle and Rogelio? To operate lifting equipment. And we need Bow and Wrodak flying.”

Adora nods. “Scorpia could supply us with additional firepower, in case they throw suppressors at us. Sweet Bee against sanitizer wasps. Peekablue for top-notch intel.”

“Do you really think all of them are free?”

“We’re going to petition the security council,” Adora says. “We’re saving the universe, remember?”

* * *

Of course they are all free. Through Lonnie, the notice goes out on the official channels, and there’s a flood of supportive feedback, all of which Adora reads, and intel tidbits for Catra.

Adora looks over the holographic animated busts of the others, rendered in the augmented reality of her navigation mask. Rather than an in-person meeting, she has chosen to let the others participate from the comfort of their own homes.

The Swift Wind is fairly low-occupancy these days, with only Adora, Catra, Damara, Entrapta, and Hordak as permanent residents. She is the only one present in the control center.

“Hello, everyone,” Adora says, "and thank you for volunteering. For a start, I would like to say that Cometa has declined my invitation for personal reasons, and nobody should have a problem with that.

"But let’s not waste any more time. Here’s the plan: we are going to Mystacor to retrieve an artifact called the ‘Failsafe’ which allows the Heart of Etheria to be safely destroyed. Without it, destroying the Heart to prevent it from falling into Prime’s claws, will be almost as bad as letting him have it.

“There’s some prep-work to do: we’re going to be heading into enemy territory. We’ll be facing powerful sorcerers who have been turned to Prime, supplemented by whatever soldiers and abominations he has seen fit to supply them with. Of note, we are very likely to run into Micah. Catra will send you all some threat assessments which I expect you to read and understand, _please_ don’t be shy to ask stupid questions.”

There’s a round of nods.

“Peekablue, thank you for attending,” Adora says.

“ _It’s the least I can do after what you did for me,_ ” he replies.

“We need some intel from you: specifically whether we will be able to make use of portal devices to achieve extraction. Can you look into that?”

“ _Certainly._ ”

Adora nods. "We don’t know exactly _what_ we’re fetching, nor its precise location, but Shadow Weaver assures me she can locate it, once we’re inside. If that fails Catra’s powers as Melog is our fallback.

"This is where Huntara comes in — thank you for volunteering.

“ _My pleasure._ ”

“In case the artifact is too large to be man-portable, or fixed in place, you are the heavy lifter. Almost all of the deep tunnels in all the mountains of Mystacor, are hewn from the rock. In the event that portal travel is impossible, it also falls on you to make us a passageway to open air, from where the Swift Wind will air-lift us out.”

“ _Can do, She-Ra,_ ” Huntara says.

"All the rest of us are basically there to ensure that Shadow Weaver and Huntara can work unimpeded. Scorpia, Catra, and myself are probably the heaviest hitters the resistance can field at present. Mystacor is Netossa and Castaspella’s home field. Glimmer and Angella is our secret weapon against Micah.

“Flying support on the Swift Wind we are going to have Bow and Wrodak, with Damara filling support roles. Kyle, thank you for volunteering.”

“ _Glad to be given the opportunity,_ ” he says.

“You are going to work with Damara to come up with a solution to the problem of air-lifting a potentially very large artifact out.”

He smiles. “ _That shouldn’t be much of a problem, Captain._ ”

"Good. That’s it for the plan. We are going in fairly blind, which I of course wish we weren’t. I will need the lot of you focused and sharp; things _will_ go wrong, and we _don’t_ have a full catalogue of contingencies in case it does. We’re going in under the cover of Catra’s invisibility, but we might not be able to rely on it the entire way in.

"Worse, we also have a secondary objective. If at all possible, neutralizing and capturing Micah will make both this mission, and every subsequent encounter with the Horde much easier.

"This is a clandestine operation, so we are bringing a small team. If we can open portals, we might be able to bring in reinforcements if things go south, but don’t count on it. Ideal scenario is no engagement. Should we obtain our primary objective of extracting the artifact, there is the option to pursue the secondary objective of capturing Micah.

"In case of engagement… There’s no easy way to say this, but we could very well end up fighting Mystacorian battle mages. I’m not going to tell you to go easy on them, or try to avoid killing, because the same courtesy is _not_ going to be extended to us.

“Any questions?”

“ _Yeah,_ ” Catra says. “ _Can you just give proper credits for the intel that led to this mission?_ ”

“Oh, right,” Adora says, “credit goes to the Archaeology team — let me just bring up the roster…” She gestures with the intentionality control gloves. “If anyone wants to send them a bounty, feel free.”

“ _Next question,_ ” Catra says, “ _It was Shadow Weaver’s ideas that led to the Skybreak, why are we going with her ideas again this time?_ ”

Adora looks at Shadow Weaver in the virtual space. “Because it shouldn’t matter where an idea comes from, if we all agree it is necessary to carry out the mission. I for one tentatively trust that she has the best interest of the resistance in mind, because I know her motives, despicable as they may be, and I am the one who is going to hold her accountable if she double-crosses anyone.”

“ _If Prime wins, we all loose this one; I’m doing my part,_ ” Shadow Weaver says.

* * *

Adora heads down in the belly of the ship to the workshop adjoining the armoury, where Catra took the meeting call.

“Hey,” she says.

Catra waves, sitting on a stool, bent over the bench. Her hair is done up in a ponytail.

Adora traipses over, looking over her shoulder. On the table is a gutted Zev squad automatic, its power cell, holo-action, mirage-reticule, and control group laid bare. Next to it is a custom-made up-scaled frame for a Zev pistol, and it is pretty clear that Catra is fitting the innards of the machine gun into the body of the pistol.

Catra doesn’t look up. “What do you need?”

Adora leans on the bench. “Why did you ask me to justify working with Shadow Weaver? You already know why we’re doing it.”

“Sometimes I ask things I already know the answer to, so you can look like a leader in front of the others. It’s called politics,” Catra says.

“Huh.”

“Huh?” Catra looks up. “That’s it?”

“Well, it’s sweet. It’s also a little disingenuous.”

Catra shrugs. “Leadership is about deciding what’s relevant for others to hear; ‘lying by omission’ by another name.”

“I never thought of it that way,” Adora admits.

“That’s why you have me around, isn’t it?”

* * *

The address of the _Panopticon_ is one unconnected to the wider Refuge III, accessible only by directly dialing the portal coordinates — they aren’t saved publicly in the network. It is a facility, buried deep in the mountains of southern Apieria.

Arriving by portal, Catra and Adora stand in a dark chamber, lit by floodlights, walls of stone brick, and vaulted ceilings. Most of the space is taken up by a building of mineral-foam walls, just like the rest of Refuge III.

Adora’s hand doesn’t even touch the door before Peekablue’s voice from inside calls out: “ _Enter!_ ”

She looks at Catra, who shrugs.

Then she opens the door, to a dimly lit room.

In the center of it, is a single hover chair. Surrounding that, is a vast array of screens, holographic and physical, bulletin boards, and three-dimensional hologram renditions, schematic as well as abstract.

“Hello, ladies,” Peekablue says from the chair, turning in place. He is casually dressed, and looks less groomed than usual. “Step into my inner sanctum.”

“Classy,” Catra remarks.

They approach the chair — a throne, on could call it — and Peekablue spins it around, gesturing for a hologram schematic to come to him.

“There’s some good news and some bad news…” Peekablue says.

“Isn’t there always?” Adora asks.

“They have copied the anti-portal ward that Castaspella _et al_ whipped up during the Portal War; I am almost certain. However… How much do you know about portal physics?”

“The normal amount?” Adora says.

"Technically, Glimmer’s Moonstone-based teleportation is portals, same as the portal network. The difference is that Glimmer’s control is much finer; her portals appear for millionths of a second. The anti-portal ward doesn’t _prevent_ portals, it just closes them when they appear, and cannot react that fast, which is why Glimmer wasn’t impeded by it.

“The Galactic Horde’s teleportation devices work the same, but on hundredths-of-a-second timescales, which the ward _can_ act on. I’d say, without Shadow Weaver’s expertise in portal sorcery, it might take them a couple of months to tweak that.”

“So,” Catra says, “they can keep us out — or _in_ — but at the same time no teleporting in reinforcements.”

“Exactly,” Peekablue says.

“So, if we make it the whole way in without detection, we’re golden,” Adora says.

“Yes. And if you mess up, you’ll have to fight your way out. This is where the second bit of bad news comes in. You’re not going to be able to get the Swift Wind close. Prime has deployed drone swarms that just occupy space in grid-formation too tight for Swift Wind to pass without physically bumping into any of them,” Peekablue says.

The schematic hologram he has summoned is one of the islands of Mystacor — probably — suspended within a three-dimensional grid of red dots. A representation of Swift Wind is given for scale, and indeed does not fit between the dots.

“Oh.”

“It doesn’t change much,” Adora says. “The Point Defense System and our own drones can deal with the Horde drone swarm if need be. It’ll limit response time somewhat.” She reaches out and grabs the hologram of the Swift Wind, positioning it close by. “If need be, we could even conduct the whole operation through portal — there’s no need to actually have the Swift Wind nearby.”

“Only if the anti-portal ward is smaller than the drone swarm,” Catra points out.

“Listen, if you want — I’ll ride along. The closer I am to the action the better I can help you,” Peekablue says.

“Peekablue, you’re the director of the resistance intelligence,” Catra says. “There’s other, better things you should be doing with the Hyperlens.”

“You two saved my life. I owe you all the help I can give; and if it means saving the world, that’s just a bonus.”

Adora holds out a hand, Peekablue takes it, and they shake on it.

“Hm. Strong grip,” he notes.

* * *

Morning comes, and the other mission members begin trickling in through portals. Catra, Adora, and Damara are sitting in the mess. Breakfast is light and high in carbs, mostly pancakes and fruit.

“How did it go with you, Entrapta, and Hordak?” Catra asks Damara nonchalantly.

Damara almost chokes on her coffee. “Oh, uh. Fine? I mean, I barely know the man, but if Entrapta wants him in her life, I have to respect it; besides he’s a capable physician, and polite to a fault, very controlled. I find it hard to believe he was some kind of megalomaniacal dictator bent on world domination.”

Catra frowns. “Yeah. Well, he was.”

“You don’t trust him?” Damara says.

“No, I do. I was just — the way you describe him, I remember what he was like way back… In fall. Damn, everything really happened fast, didn’t it?”

“How is he with the whole Prime thing?” Adora asks.

Damara nods. “Conflicted, some. Wrodak being here helps, and I talk with him. The work too, helps. Hope is in short supply, but I think he’s realizing that he will never find what he needs with Prime.”

“Good,” Adora says. “The last thing we need is him defecting. Again. -Ish.”

Scorpia comes in. She, like Adora and Catra, rise on military time — which fits well with Perfuma’s morning ritual of meditating in the sunrise.

“Hello, everybody!” she greets, as she comes up to the table. “Man, Catra, I still cannot get over the fact that you’re somehow bigger than me now.”

Catra is in fact about two inches taller than Scorpia. She snorts. “Yeah, well, I can tell you having a second growth spurt is super awkward.”

“Yeah I can imagine. Coffee?”

Adora gestures to the other table, where a five gallon thermos with a tap sits.

Just then, Glimmer, Bow blink in, arriving directly in the mess. Damara winces a little. Bow looks his usual alert self, Glimmer is barely holding on to wakefulness. She spots the coffee and lumbers over to the table.

“Hey Flyboy,” Catra says.

“Hey you,” he replies. “Captain, Quartermaster.”

Over by the coffee, Scorpia fixes Glimmer a cup out of pity — cream and two sugars.

Then people start arriving fast. Huntara comes in, followed shortly by Castaspella.

Damara gets up. “Excuse me, Kyle and his team has arrived in the cargo bay with some heavy equipment, I need to assist them.” She vanishes into thin air.

“Kyle _and his team?_ ” Adora says. “This I gotta see.”

Catra scoffs. “You _do_ know he was supervising technical officer for _months_ right?”

“Not even a little.”

* * *

Adora and Catra arrive in the cargo bay to see Kyle talking with Damara, while keeping an eye on six technicians moving crates in through the portal. Rogelio comes through and spots the two of them, giving a wave.

Adora jogs up to them. In truth, she hasn’t seen the two of them since they arrived by portal that morning outside Brightmoon, over a month ago; and that was only in passing.

“Kyle! Rogelio!” she says.

“Adora! Good to see you—” Kyle begins. “You’re a lot taller than I remember.”

“You saw her from afar at the security council meetings,” Rogelio says. “Though I suppose it’s different up-close.”

“You’ve grown yourself,” Adora says, giving him a pat on the shoulder. There’s only so much PE can do, but hard labor puts muscle on the frame of even a wiry guy like Kyle.

All of them has. Stress does that to people. Nothing like a bit of war to get rid of the last puppy fat. Rogelio is somehow even spinier and scalier than he was almost a year ago.

“You two look good,” Adora says.

“You too,” Rogelio says. “And you as well, Catra.”

Catra gives a little wave. “All we need is Lonnie here, then we could have a little squad reunion, huh?”

“She’s busy, I’m afraid,” Kyle says. “There’s a war; maybe you’ve heard.”

Adora snorts.

“It’s a terrible shame we never got to talk before you departed for the stars,” Rogelio notes. He holds out a hand to Adora, and she takes it. “Let’s make sure we win this, so we can get to catch up later.”

Adora gives his hand a firm shake.

“Anyway, we’re burning daylight,” Kyle says, “let’s go set up the hoists, babe.” He pats Rogelio on the shoulder in passing.

* * *

Peekablue is there in the mess when they return. He’s already facing the door when it opens, and gives a little wave.

“Now we’re only missing you-know-who,” Catra notes.

Adora nods. “And Netossa.”

There’s footsteps in the hall behind them, and they both turn to see her. Shadow Weaver. Face uncovered, hair kept in a tight bun, and wearing quite sensible clothes.

“Hello, girls,” she says.

Adora and Catra exchange glances.

“You will address me as Captain,” Adora says, “and Catra as Lieutenant.”

“My apologies,” Shadow Weaver says with a gracious smile. “Captain, Lieutenant. Is that coffee I smell?”

They step aside, and Shadow weaver enters the mess, gliding past them with elven grace.

“I mean, it didn’t get a rise out of her but on-the-spot promotion? Nice,” Catra says. “I thought you were going to have Flyboy be your second-in-command.”

“And give him paperwork? Never.”

“Oh, so you just need me as your Adjutant, then,” Catra says snidely.

“You can have the privilege of answering all my fan mail,” Adora says.

They hold their composure for a beat then break down laughing.

* * *

“All right, everybody, this is it,” Adora says.

Everyone is gathered in the cargo bay, so the technicians can hear it too.

“We get one shot at this, the universe hangs in the balance. No pressure.”

There’s a round of laughter, the way only soldiers laugh at gallows humor.

“Last minute addition,” Adora says, “courtesy of Sweet Bee, a new piece of tech.” She grabs a plastic crate, and opens it. Little hexagonal talismans with stylized bees on the obverse and a complex magical diagram on the reverse. "Wasp wards. Hazard suits can keep wasps out, but according to Sweet Bee, only to a point, and I am not about to find out what that point is.

"Once we get near Mystacor, Peekablue is going to take a closer look, and inform us whether the drone swarm or the portal ward is biggest. This will decide whether we’re going in close, or staying a safe distance away.

“Go-no-go on the hoists?”

Kyle gives her an OK-sign. “We are ‘go.’ Portal device also ‘go.’ Just give us a target.”

“Good. Ground team, standard clandestine procedures, we’re using Lieutenant Catra’s stealth ability for infiltration. Fast and quiet.”

There’s a round of assenting nods and gestures. The final ground team numbers Adora, Catra, Glimmer, Castaspella, Shadow Weaver, Netossa, Scorpia, and Huntara.

“Flight team, status?”

“Green across the board,” Damara says.

“Give the order,” Bow concurs.

Adora looks at Catra by her side. Catra smiles and nods.

“All right!” Catra says, taking a step forward. “We’re surfacing in _five!_ Ground team gear up and prepare for deployment! Extraction team, stand by; I want a full test of all equipment _before_ takeoff.”

Adora heads to the control center, and Bow, Wrodak, Damara, and Peekablue fall in step behind her.


	13. Fail Safe, Enter Necropolis

“Shadow Weaver to the control center,” Adora says into her communicator.

Bow puts them on an approach path, and a section of the wall screens show their destination. The sixteen flying mountains that are Mystacor, hanging mostly above a bay with a small harbor. The largest are anchored to the islets dotting the rocky, barren shoreline, with dark cables that look like gossamer at this distance, but are the size of tree-trunks up close.

The southernmost one is the battle island, easily dwarfed by the rest. The ones that hang low over land, cast dark shadows underneath, and there the earth is barren, plant life choked out by the darkness.

“Peekablue, what’s your verdict?”

“We go in close,” he says. “The portal ward is way bigger than the drone swarm.”

Damara helpfully highlights every drone in the air, floating in a grid.

There is a _lot_ of drones.

“So,” Adora says. “What happens if they all decide to fly around…”

“If they bump into us, we’ll be detected,” Damara says, “but they can’t detect us, so we’ll only be in trouble if we hang around.”

“What if they bring in something that will catch us in the blast radius, like those — what did you call them?”

“Nuclear fission bombs?” Damara asks. “First, I don’t think they will, second, we flew within spitting distance of Sola. We’ll be fine.”

“Bow, take us in close, from above,” Adora orders.

“Yes Captain,” Bow says.

The backboard-side door opens, and Shadow Weaver enters, already wearing her hazard suit armor, helmet under one arm. “Captain?”

“Shadow Weaver, please confer with Peekablue. I need to know which island the Failsafe is on.”

“Well, it would have to be the main one,” Shadow Weaver says and points.

Peekablue looks to the most prominent island of Mystacor; the one upon which the college, the gardens, the healing houses, and the springs are located. Under the college is the old college, carved out of the rock, and its deep halls within.

“No it isn’t,” Peekablue says.

Shadow Weaver looks at him. “Pardon?”

“There’s underground structures on _all_ the islands, is there not?”

“There is, but—.”

Peekablue ponders this for a moment. “Ah. Of course; they’re all connected, the catacombs. By portals.”

“We know,” Shadow Weaver says.

“Oh. You do?”

“Of course; the dimensions of the catacomb network is too big to fit inside the main island. There’s been accurate maps of the accessible areas for at least a century. Some of the surface tunnels allow passage from one island to the next, and have been used to traverse Mystacor possibly since its creation.”

Peekablue turns back to look at the wallscreen and the approaching levitating archipelago. Adora and Shadow Weaver both mirror him.

“So,” Adora says, “why don’t we already know where the Failsafe is?”

Shadow Weaver glances at Adora. “There are blank spots on the map; too many to count. And secret gateways sealed by magic and mechanism, and safe-guarded against… Brute-force trespassing, shall we say, in a great number of ways. Death curses are popular, if the archaeological records are to be believed.”

Adora nods. “You should like you think I should have figured this out myself.”

“I do and you should.”

Adora nods, she looks Shadow Weaver directly in the eye. Shadow Weaver is tall, for a woman, and she’s an elf too, which adds to the effect. Once upon a time, she would tower over Adora. Now it is the other way around.

“If I recall it was _you_ who put _Ten Habits of Highly Effective Commanding Officers_ in my reading rotation, no?”

“Ah; ‘don’t make assumptions’ if memory serves?”

“If you’d rather I get Castaspella to tell me these things, I’m sure she would be delighted.”

“Castaspella’s interest in the catacombs have always been practical; I’m the only one aboard this ship with comprehensive knowledge.”

Adora leans in. “ _Then. Do. Your. Job._ And don’t tell me how to do mine.”

“Shadow Weaver, if you are done getting over your empty nest syndrome, I have something for you,” Peekablue says. He points at one of the smaller islands. “That one.” Then another. “That one.” Then another. “That one. It’s in one of those three.”

“As we have just established, Prince, the physical layout of the accessible catacombs does not correspond in a discernible manner to the physical reality,” Shadow Weaver says.

“Yes, I realize that, but the basic geopositioning in the visor interfaces of the hazard suits can solve part of that problem…” He turns to Adora. “Captain, with your permission, I am going to suit up and join you on the ground.”

“It’s going to be dangerous,” Adora says.

“I can hold my own in a fight.”

Adora gestures to the door. “Suit up. Be quick about it.”

He darts past her, already undoing his necktie.

* * *

“Ground team, ready?” Catra calls out.

Adora, Scorpia, Glimmer, Netossa, Castaspella, Catra, Huntara, Shadow Weaver, and Peekablue link hands.

“Cloaking,” Catra says, and wave of darkness sweep over them all, leaving nothing in its wake.

They still perceive each other almost as if shaped from solid fog, but all outside observers are completely blind to their presence.

“ _Invisibility confirmed,_ ” Damara informs them.

“Invoking silencing spell,” Castaspella says. The words are themselves the activation phrase, and paper talismans in each of their pockets activates, quieting all noise considerably.

“ _Switching to comms,_ ” Glimmer says, audible to all of them. “ _We are about to commense teleportation. Brace yourselves. In five… Four… Three… Two… One… Mark._ ”

Everyone tenses a little before the transfer, then there’s no puff of light — suppressed by Catra’s cloaking.

They arrive in the gardens, under the morning light.

“ _Nobody freak out, remember, they can’t see us. Don’t make any noise, don’t bump into anyone or anything, avoid loose foliage and soft ground,_ ” Catra says. “ _You don’t have to hold hands, but stay close. Netossa, you’re on point._ ”

They all fall in behind Netossa, and wordlessly she leads them through the multi-layered terrace, under hanging fruit trees in full bloom. The scent on the air is full and rich; the place is already beginning to overgrow.

The gardens are in use. The resistance has only about half the former staff of the Mystacor university’s staff of sorcerers. The other half is here. Sanitized. A few are walking about the gardens for pleasure or a change of scenery in their studies — the entire student body has been replaced with horde clones in acolyte dress.

It is particularly terrifying to see a satyr woman in Horde whites, teach a class of six clones how to cast lightning bolts. The booming thunder can be heard at regular intervals.

Rather than risk the narrow staircases, Netossa directs them up the escarpment walls. Adora puts her back against the cobbled stone, and gives everyone who needs it a leg up.

They make it to a side-entrance; the one used when one’s business in the gardens is less than becoming of the ornate and heavily trafficked main gates — it’s called the ‘lover’s gate’ for good reason.

Inside the building, Netossa heads them through the labyrinthine corridors of the main college; other magical colleges are built on sane principles of organization, but Mystacor has a long history of eccentricity.

There’s bustle in the corridors. Sorcerers coming and going; many of them not even from Mystacor. And yet for each Etherian mage, there’s at least one a Horde clone.

They come upon a wide hall, and there at the end of it is the bare hewn stone, ornately chiseled. Old Mystacor.

Netossa waves them up and they proceed down the hall. Suddenly Catra gives sign to halt and grabs Netossa in front by the shoulder. Netossa looks at her, she shakes her head. Then she turns and waves Glimmer up.

They wait with bated breath, five paces from the cross-wise hallway before the entrance to Old Mystacor.

Micah walks into view. Dressed in white battledress, paging through a sheaf of paper notes.

He stops, and looks down the hallway, directly at them, pupils orange like fire, skin pale.

None of them dares even breathe, despite the cloak and the silence spell.

Then Micah shakes his head, and rubs his eyes. “You’re working yourself too hard old boy,” he mutters to himself, then walks on.

Everyone gives a sigh of relief, and Netossa darts up to peek around the corner. A few seconds pass, then she waves everyone across.

* * *

Micah continues down the corridor, stopping once more to look behind him. He stands there for a long moment, pondering. Then he closes the sheaf of papers and heads back to the gate to Old Mystacor at a brisk pace.

He gazes down the dark hall, seeing nothing, and yet…

Once is random, twice, a coincidence, but three times?

* * *

Old Mystacor is, despite it’s name, still in occasional use; certain ceremonies are conducted there, such as the initiation of members of the council. The hall of Headmasters still has room for another dozen generations of statues.

They trudge through the gallery, past the old masters, eventually happening on the most recent ones. Castaspella’s countenance hewn from blue granite at the very end as the sitting headmistress, and across from her, the former headmistress, a faun lady with antlers so large they have been depicted in steel rather than stone.

And then next to Castaspella, a mutilated torso: head and hands removed, and the grey slate charred and melted. The name plaque has been removed, but it once read Light Spinner.

Past the Hall of Headmasters lies the Oracular Pool chamber. A large room held up by columns in pointed barrel vaults.

The chamber is occupied, by three sorcerers, young graduates tasked with maintaining and monitoring a scrying spell.

Their destination is at the other end of the room, through a massive set of cast-iron gates.

Catra draws them back. “ _Okay, how do we get through here?_ ” she asks. “ _A portal? Teleporting?_ ”

“ _No,_ ” Peekablue says. “ _There’s wards in that room, we’d be found out immediately._ ”

“ _Catra, go knock them out,_ ” Adora says. “ _Casta, Glimmer, Shadow Weaver; between the three of you sorcerersses, we need those guys hypnotized and mind-wiped; like it was all just deja vu._ ”

“ _I can’t make any guarantees,_ ” Shadow Weaver says.

“ _You have as long as it takes her to get back,_ ” Adora says.

Catra draws a stun gun, and heads to the door.

Just then, a fourth sorcerer enters the hall of Headmasters, hurrying towards the Oracular Pool.

Shadow Weaver reaches out and clasps Catra’s shoulder.

Catra recoils as if burned. “Get _off_ me!” she says, backpedaling past the doorway.

And worse, the cloak keeping them all hidden vanishes.

The sorcerer down the hall freezes.

“Netossa!” Adora barks.

Netossa wastes no time, and the sorcerer at the other end of the hall of Headmasters is suddenly leashed with a tether around his neck, and one over his mouth hanging open in surprise around the back of his head. He is at once strangled and gagged. A third tether lashes around his torso, under the arms, this one connected back to Netossa.

He gurgles against the constricting choker, and bridle-like gag. He is pulled off his feet, landing prone, and then roughly dragged across the entire hall, over to Netossa.

“ _What was that?_ ” one of the three sorcerers by the pool says.

“ _It was probably nothing; but let’s follow procedure._ ”

Catra turns invisible again. The others push flush against the wall.

A minotaur woman walks through the doorway, and in that same moment, there’s the sound of a quick struggle behind her: two grunts of pain in rapid succession, followed by two bodies hitting the ground.

Adora lunges at the woman, grappling her from behind and putting her in a choke hold. She sputters and grunts, fighting against Adora’s arm; it might as well be a collar made from steel. She passes out within seconds: minotaur stamina notwithstanding, this sorceress is no soldier.

“Great. There’s no way we can undo this mess,” Shadow Weaver notes.

“Try,” Adora says, releasing the minotaur, so as to not kill her. She slumps on the ground.

“She’s right,” Castaspella says. “Mind magic is delicate, and we’ve got four subjects to work on. If we had a full day, _maybe._ ”

* * *

They drag the four unconscious sorcerers inside the pool chamber and lay them in the corner. Netossa injects them each in turn with a sedative that will last hours, and Catra lays a more long-lasting cloaking on the corner.

Then Castaspella restores their quieting spells, and Catra turns all of them invisible once more.

“ _Let’s go,_ ” Adora says. “ _Before someone else walks in on this mess._ ”

They head to the great iron gate, and Catra puts a breaching tool on it, confirming with Peekablue that it isn’t going to trip the wards. The little machine spins up and tears a hole of warped space through the gate for all of them to step through. Catra removes it, and the hole vanishes, leaving them in darkness.

“ _We’re mostly safe now,_ ” Peekablue says. “ _Nobody has been in here for a while._ ”

“ _All right, lights on,_ ” Adora says.

Three light spells, and a few hand-held torches come out. The corridor they are standing in is cold granite. Along the walls are carved out cubbies, and many of them hold skulls. This place wasn’t always catacombs, but with the construction of the above-ground college a few hundred years ago, it was repurposed.

“ _Now what?_ ” Adora says.

“ _Difficult to say,_ ” Peekablue notes. “ _I think it is beyond my power to find us the way there directly; at least if you want to use my power for anything else at all._ ”

“ _If we can just locate the right corridor,_ ” Shadow Weaver says, “ _I’ll know what we’re looking for when I see it; I’m sure of it._ ”

“ _Good. Then let me point us in the general direction,_ ” Catra says, and heads to the front. She takes out a fat silver coin.

They head down the corridor until it opens up to a large hall that might once have been used for something else, but now holds caskets.

“ _How many people do they bury here?_ ” Glimmer asks.

“ _All alumni are entitled; but it’s not like we’re pressed for space, not since the policy to only entomb skulls,_ ” Castaspella says.

There’s three exits. Catra flips twice, then picks one.

“ _That is a very impressive trick, Lieutenant,_ ” Peekablue notes.

“ _It’s just luck, nothing tricky about it,_ ” Catra says.

They head down another corridor lined with skulls.

* * *

It’s a long walk through the dark. The air is musty at best and unbreathably oxygen-deprived at worst. Halls lined with skulls in cubbies connecting chambers ranging from cathedral-sized to quite small; even more labyrinthine than the college above.

Shadow Weaver falls behind, joining Adora at the rear guard.

“ _I see you and Catra have grown close again,_ ” she says, on a private channel. “ _Do you really think it’s wise to mix business with pleasure in these times? Romantic entaglements can sour professional relations._ ”

Adora looks at her. “ _Catra and I aren’t together._ ”

“ _You could have fooled me._ ”

Adora looks ahead.

“ _Besides, She-Ra’s power comes from love,_ ” Adora says.

“ _And what are you going to do if something happens to her? She’s as powerful as you are, is she not? If she cannot save herself from danger one day, there’s no reason to believe you will be able to instead._ ”

Adora closes the private channel.

* * *

They enter a long, wider corridor with a high, vaulted ceiling.

“ _We’re no longer on the main island,_ ” Peekablue notes as they set out down the corridor.

“ _You can tell that with your powers?_ ” Glimmer asks. “ _It doesn’t feel any different to mine._ ”

“ _Look at your geopositioning,_ ” He clarifies.

“ _Oh._ ”

“ _Wait! I see something up ahead!_ ” Shadow Weaver says, and sets into a light jog.

Catra stops, and Shadow Weaver passes, coming to a stop up ahead at a bare patch of wall. “ _Castaspella, come!_ ”

Castaspella hurries over. “ _I’m not seeing what you’re seeing._ ”

“ _Ah, I take it you didn’t take my advice to habitually employ Mastress Alsie’s suite of truesight spells even when there’s no apparent need for them?_ ”

“ _I did not; that was your paranoia speaking.!_ ”

Shadow Weaver sighs and takes Castaspella’s hand, placing it on the wall. “ _Feel that fault?_ ”

“ _There’s a hidden joint here! There’s a hidden door!_ ” Castaspella says, elated.

“ _The locking wards are primitive,_ ” Shadow Weaver says. “ _Give me a hand; we might be able to preserve them for later study._ ” There’s a little bit of uncharacteristic excitement in her voice.

* * *

It take Shadow Weaver and Castaspella a few minutes to carefully undo each locking ward, which gives the others time to relax.

“ _Say,_ ” Scorpia begins, “ _when do you suppose they’re going to find out we knocked four people out and left them in a corner? We’ve been down here for an hour and a half by now._ ”

“ _I’m thinking the same,_ ” Huntara adds, “ _This is beginning to look too easy._ ”

“ _Even if they did, how are they going to track us?_ ” Netossa asks.

Catra smacks herself on the forehead. “ _By scent, of course. Not that there’s a lot to go by, since we’re all pretty well suited up…_ ”

“ _Except you and me,_ ” Adora notes. They are indeed the only ones wearing ‘clothes,’ apart from their visors. The rest are all in hazard suits.

“ _I’m not so sure they could get an animal to willingly track me,_ ” Catra notes. “ _I smell like danger._ ”

“ _So that just leaves me,_ ” Adora says. “ _Hm. Come to think of it, I left some blood behind in the Red City, when I was impaled._ ”

“ _Crap,_ ” Catra says.

* * *

The the massive stone doors swing open, revealing neat a neat staircase, descending into the deep.

The ceiling itself glows faintly.

“ _Let’s go,_ ” Adora orders.

They head down into the very foundations of the levitating island. The stone itself seems alive, deep below the hewn surface, imbued with the levitation spell that keeps the whole place afloat.

Not a speck of dust lies on any of the steps.

“ _Look at these murals!_ ” Castaspella notes.

Along the walls, in bas-relief is many a scene carved out for all to see.

It’s a pictogra guide. There’s a carving of Etheria, with Erulia and Cranea outlined.

Then the same motif, cut away to reveal the center of the planet, with an upside-down skull in the core.

Next, the skull, connected by a spine, up to the surface, where the spine connects to Dagon Rock — the Crystal Castle.

Then there’s Mystacor, and inside mystacor a three-column device. People passing through the device become armed with a sword, and the sword impales the skull.

The message repeats in many guises: the failsafe is in mystacor, use it to destroy the Heart.

There’s warnings: bring may people, bring She-Ra, beware Light Hope. Over and over again, in many different ways and interpretations, all the way down.

“ _They really want people to understand this,_ ” Castaspella says. “ _But why was the entrance hidden so well?_ ”

“ _To discourage casual discovery. A secret was probably judged more likely to trigger the intended action,_ ” Shadow Weaver says.

Finally they reach an open gallery of columns and vaulted ceilings.

At the far end, is an arched gateway.

“ _All right, stay sharp,_ ” Catra says, taking the lead.

She takes two steps past the first set of columns and the entire dark hall fills with light; as roaring flames sprint into existence.

Adora moves without thinking, on a jet of starlight she plows directly into the inferno, as her silk-like shield barrier engulfs her. She bodily tackles Catra’s dark silhouette in the midst of the conflagration, enveloping her in the shield as well.

They trumble to the ground, and Adora lands on top of Catra.

The wall of fire they just went through winks out, and the others come running.

“ _Be advised, some of the fire is illusory, some of it is not!_ ” Shadow Weaver says.

Catra looks up at Adora’s face, two visors and a few inches from hers. She blushes. “ _I’m okay, Adora, you can get off me now._ ”

“ _Sorry,_ ” Adora says, and hastens to rise, then gives Catra a hand and pulls her to her feet.

“ _Thanks for the save, even if I wwasn’t in any danger,_ ” Catra says.

“ _No problem. You’d do the same for me,_ ” Adora says.

Catra rolls her eyes. “ _Not like you need it, with that shield of yours._ ”

“ _Admit it, you’d jump into fire for me,_ ” Adora says with a wry smile.

“ _Shut up!_ ” Catra squeals.

“ _Castaspella,_ ” Shadow Weaver says, “ _please find us a path through. Adora? A word._ ”

“ _What do you need to speak to Adora about?_ ” Catra says.

“ _Catra, it’s okay, I’ll handle whatever this is,_ ” Adora says.

Catra looks at her, then nods. She turns and heads over to Castaspella who is standing with the others, casting a complex spell of true sight.

Shadow Weaver switches to a private channel. “ _Your judgement is compromised,_ ” she says.

“ _No it isn’t,_ ” Adora says.

“ _Catra is more than capable of evading a simple fire trap, and I know you realise this intellectually and yet… You acted out of fear for her wellbeing._ ”

“ _Some would say that’s a good thing,_ ” Adora notes sardonically.

Shadow Weaver steps closer, and puts a hand on Adora’s shoulder. “ _I understand what it’s like to be in love. Believe it or not, I have been, myself. But you cannot let your emotions influence your judgment like this; you are too important to the resistance. We need She-Ra at her fullest capacity, and I am not talking about power. You are a leader; you cannot afford attachments like this._ ”

“ _It’s not like that,_ ” Adora protests, looking away.

“ _No, it is a one-sided infatuation. I know it is painful, but you must try to rid yourself of it. For everyone’s sake._ ”

Adora turns away and begins walking after the others.

“ _I raised you better than this,_ ” Shadow Weaver says.

Adora looks back at her. “ _You never raised me. You just tormented me. You tortured Catra and told me it was my fault._ ”

“ _I needed you to be strong. To be someone who could make the hard choices that need to be made. Not to throw away the fate of the universe for a sentiment as banal as love._ ”

Adora turns fully, and stomps back to her.

“ _What are you going to do, threaten to smash my hand? You know I’m right._ ”

“ _I’m not going to let you have power over me, ever again,_ ” Adora says.

“ _What will your friends think the universe is destroyed because you chose unrequited love over a future for everyone?_ ”

* * *

Their destination is a wide chamber, ceiling held up by struts of dark material — much stronger than mere stone, judging from the span and their delicate thickness.

At the center of the room sits a podium. Upon it stands a pillar of blue crystal, inlaid with Fist-Ones’ writing. A gentle radiance emanates from it.

It is utterly enormous. Fifty feet tall, at least. They approach it, each feeling something like awe.

“ _Fuck, this is way too big_ ” Catra says. “ _Peekablue, any chance we can move this?_ ”

Peekablue heads to the side, and walks around it, inspecting it. “ _Maybe. I thin Huntara might be able to scoop it out of the ground — wait._ ”

He bends down by the podium, and runs a hand over a section of the stone step. There he finds some kind of panel, and slides it aside. He stands, holding a data crystal. “ _Look what I found! This is Peekablue to Air team, do you copy?_ ”

“ _We read you,_ ” Bow replies smartly for all of them to hear.

“ _I"m sending you the contents of a data crystal._ ” Peekablue plugs it into his suit, and the data transfer begins.

“ _Damara? Analysis?_ ” Adora asks.

“ _Stand by…_ ” Damara says, and they wait a few more seconds. “ _Okay, got it! This is the schematics for the Failsafe artifact!_ ”

“ _Wait, Really?_ ” Adora asks.

“ _Yeah, I’d recognize Serenia’s work anywhere! Theoretically, we can build our own Failsafe now! Although…_ ”

“ _What?_ ” Adora asks.

“ _We might not have time. It would take us months._ ”

“ _Shit,_ ” Catra says.

* * *

The dogs are skittish, and Micah waits impatiently, while the houndskeeper wrangles them, getting them to pick up the scent of one of the missing sorcerer graduates from a set of dirty underwear recovered from the slob’s sleeping quarters.

The dogs sniff around for a bit, then head directly into an empty corner.

Micah raises an eyebrow. Then he heads into the corner and nearly stumbles over an invisible object. A simple dispelling fails to take, so he bends down and drags the object out of the invisibility, revealing one of the missing sorcerers. Unconscious.

He turns to his clone liaison. “Alert Prime: We have intruders. I’m fairly certain Melog is among their number. And I believe I know what they’re here for.”

“Of course, Master Micah.”

* * *

“ _Heads up,_ ” Bow says. “ _We’re picking up a lot of activity down there. Incoming teleportations — they’re teleporting troops in on the island you’re on! Into it, down in the catacombs!_ ”

“ _The drones are beginning to fly search patterns, we can’t remain stationary for long,_ ” Damara adds.

Adora takes the silence charm out of her pocket and rips it. “All right, everybody! We’re about to be in hot water! Huntara, Peekablue, figure out how to lift that thing from the floor.”

“Adora, it’s too big to fit in the Swift Wind,” Peekablue says.

“Lift it anyway, see if you can lift it and drop it through a portal; Catra, can you get us a portal?”

“I’ll try!” Catra says.

The fire in the antechamber winks out.

“We’ve got company!” Netossa calls from the door.

“Huntara, seal the door!” Adora orders.

Huntara stomps, and a wall of stone rises out of the floor, occluding the entrance.

“They’ve activated the portal ward!” Catra says.

“Glimmer?” Adora asks.

“There’s no way she can blink it,” Peekablue says.

“Then there’s only one thing to do,” Shadow Weaver says. “We have to use it. Micah knows where it is now; and he will have told Prime. It will be destroyed as soon as we leave. At least one of us will have to carry the spell to the Heart.”

Pandemonium erupts.

“You cannot _seriously_ be suggesting that we choose who to sacrifice _right now,_ what is wrong with you?” Castaspella protests.  |  “ _There it is!_ I _knew_ it!” Catra exclaims.  |  “Now let’s not do anything rash! Let’s talk about this!” Peekablue says.   
---|---|---  
“As much as I dislike the idea, it does seem to be our only option,” Netossa yells. “We’re kind of under time pressure!”  |  “Oh, _I_ see you looking at Adora,” Glimmer yells, “why don’t you volunteer _yourself,_ huh?”  |  “Everybody, I can hear something on the other side of the door,” Huntara yells.   
  
“ _Shut up!_ ”

There’s a moment of silence, as all eyes turn to Adora.

“Huntara, set us up some cover. Everybody, guns out, prepare for combat. Scorpia, if anything busts down that door, I want you to turn it to ash.”

There’s a round of nods. Huntara begins raising a chest-high wall spanning the entire room.

“Peekablue, how do we activate it?”

“Touch it and let it know you are on its side,” he says, cryptically.

Adora heads up the short flight of stairs onto the podium and puts a hand on the blue crystal. “I am here to finish what the Grayskull Squadron started,” she says.

There’s a shift, and a parting line forms in the crystal, running up the entire obelisk. The stone in the floor flows like water, as the monolith splits into three parts, sliding away from each other, each as big as a tree trunk.

Up above, the tip of the crystal, a triangular bi-pyramid, rotates languidly.

A diagram lights up on the floor, written in First-Ones’ writing. It invites her to step inside.

“I’m not going to ask for volunteers,” she says.

Someone grabs her hand.

Adora looks back, to see Catra, one foot on the stairs

“Shadow Weaver is _sacrificing you,_ Adora. Why can’t you see that?”

“I can,” Adora replies. “And even if she is, this is our only option. I’m not going to let anyone else die, if I can help it. You saw the murals; this was _designed_ with me in mind.”

“No it’s not! You’re She-Ra, but _I’m_ Melog, we’re on the same level, and all it needs is powerful people —” Catra turns to point “— Shadow Weaver, you have that obtainer inside you, why don’t _you_ carry the spell? Don’t you _want_ to be the conduit for all the magic on Etheria?”

“Nice try, Catra, but I am not going to commit suicide.”

Adora grabs Catra’s hand with both of hers. “Catra,” she says.

Catra turns to look Adora in the eyes.

Adora begins to say something but Catra interrupts. “No!” she says. “At least let _me_ go first, make sure it’s safe; Melog is just as powerful as She-Ra. Whatever chance _you_ have, I have just the same, _better_ even, being _lucky_ is my whole _thing._ ”

“Etheria isn’t your planet, Cat. Krytis is.”

“So what?”

“Catra, I can’t lose you; not again.”

“ _What kind of argument is that?!_ Do you think _I_ can lose _you?_ ”

“We’re out of options. This is the only way. I’ll go first I’m the most likely to survive destroying the Heart and we don’t know how long it takes for this thing to cycle. Afterwards, if we have time…”

Catra looks towards the sealed door. The stone itself is turning dark, somehow.

Everyone is huddle behind the erected cover wall.

“Oh, I’m going to make sure we have; I’m not letting you do this alone.”


	14. Pitched Battle, Botched Aftermath

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cw: body horror

Adora steps into the circle, between the three standing stones.

She feels the machinery at the edge of her perception, and her jacket begins floating on her shoulders. Then a gentle field of force picks her up and rotates her in the air, onto her back; she lets it.

A deep hum permeates the room.

Then the pain begins. Searing sensations beginning at her fingertips, toes, and top of her head, as little dots of light begin crawling their way up, drawing lines of white-hot pain across her skin.

She grits her teeth. They reach her shoulders and hips, rivulets of what might be molten steel run down her neck and onto her chest. A whimper escapes her.

The bearing balls of fire collect at her sternum, forming a blob of light there.

And then, up above, arcs of lightning rise from each of the pillars, connecting to the levitating crystal, which focuses the energy and shoots a beam straight down, through Adora.

The agony is indescribable; all she can do is scream.

* * *

Catra wants to hold her ears. _Please pass out, please pass out, please pass out._ Her hands shake, and she grips the pistols tighter; it’s a pair of Toha anti-materiel rifle actions in handgun frames.

All of them are regularly spaced along the cover wall. Most everyone has an automatic firearm, and most of those are pointed at the door.

“Huntara! Make a wall so they can’t shoot Adora or the Failsafe machine!” she barks. “Everyone, get ready!”

“Roger!” Huntara says from over a few dozen yards away, and puts both her hands on the ground. A huge mass of stone rises from the floor, obscuring the machine entirely from view.

Darkness swirls from the cracks between the door frame and the blocking slab of rock, and even seems to permeate through the stone itself.

Then suddenly it disappears.

A glowing crack forms in the stone slab, and a high-pitched whine precedes it blasting apart, sending sharp fragments of stone flying and skittering across the floor.

“ _Open fire!_ ” Catra yells.

A wuthering hailstorm of holographic bullets tear through the open doorway. Netossa, Huntara, and Peekablue all unloading their Zev squad automatics. Something in the dust cloud takes multiple hits and falls over dead.

The walls themselves on either side become suffused with darkness.

Then, phasing through, comes fresh horror: floating skulls with fangs glowing eyes, on bodies of smoke. A dozen of them.

“ _Wraiths! Don’t let them touch you!_ ” Shadow Weaver yells.

Peekablue, Netossa, and Huntara turn their guns on the ghostly figures advancing across the battleground. Bullets tear through them, drawing trails of smoke out behind them, seemingly to little effect, but still causing the creatures to stumble. One of them takes a bullet through the skull and immediately dissipates.

“Shoot them in the head!” Netossa yells. In short order, the twelve figures all dissipate, but more begin emerging from the walls.

More of the wall behind is blown away, widening the doorway, and in the dust, sections of mobile barricades are carried in, establishing a beach-head.

Above it all, Adora’s screaming is still audible.

Catra pops out of cover to take a few shots, deleting the skull of a wraith, and shooting holes in a section of barricade.

“Scorpia!” Catra yells.

Scorpia rises out of cover and unloads a bolt of lightning so bright and loud everyone’s visor blacks it out and mutes audio.

Vaporized debris clouds clear, revealing all the barricades completely melted and burned, several charred corpses strewn about.

Then the return fire commences. Ten, or perhaps twenty machine guns open fire. The loud kind, shooting metal bullets. All of them hunker down behind cover, thoroughly suppressed.

Then Catra looks up to see the skull of a Wraith peek over cover. She shoots it in the head. “ _Wraiths!_ ” she yells into the comms, rolls onto her back, and kicks away from the cover wall.

Up and down the wall, the wraiths have reached their little wall.

Catra begins shooting, and so does the others.

“ _Huntara! We need more cover!_ ” Catra calls out. Huntara rolls over onto her belly, and Catra takes out a Wraith making its way over the wall to get here. There’s a scream to Catra’s other side and she sees a Wraith emerging from the floor, holding onto Castaspella’s foot.

Shadow Weaver banishes it with a spell, but the damage is done.

“ _Sparkles! The wraiths are coming up from the floor, we need something!_ ” Catra yells. The suppressive fire abates as columns rise out of the floor beyond the now pock-marked cover wall. Catra peeks out of cover and starts taking pot-shots at the gunners, blowing teacup-sized holes through stone, armor plate, and gun alike.

Peekablue darts back beyond the huge wall protecting the Failsafe machine, and from that position starts clearing the wraiths with precision fire, always seeming to know where the next one will emerge.

* * *

Shadow Weaver draws a ward into the floor, and from it springs a circle of protection around the three of them. Castaspella is lying on her back, clutching her ankle. The touch of a wraith inflicts necrosis; extremely painful.

“Shadow Weaver, show me that ward against the wraiths,” Glimmer says.

“What for? We cannot possibly ward this whole space!” Shadow Weaver says. “There is no time!”

“Just do it!”

Shadow Weaver moves aside, showing the engraving she made in the floor — with a spell, of course.

Glimmer studies it for a moment. “I hope this works,” she says, and closes her eyes. In her mind’s eye, she sees the negative space of the engraving, perfectly rendered.

She feels the floors and the domed walls all about them. She feels the air on her fingertips. Then she simply adapts one to the other, and wills it.

A wafer thin layer of rock is shaved off the floor next to them, appearing between Glimmer’s hands and immediately crumbling to sand. The ward activates.

“Hah!” Glimmer says, and then she goes to work.

Within seconds, the entire floor of the domed chamber is covered at regularly spaced sigils; wraiths caught in their radius are reduced to inert skulls.

A small pile of rock dust lies in front of her.

“Amazing,” Shadow Weaver mutters.

“Wraith problem has been taken ca—” Glimmer says, then Shadow Weaver reaches out and yanks her out of the way, just in time for a heavy white-painted tactical shield to come down where she was kneeling, crushing the stone.

Behind it stands a clone in full armor. He lifts the shield and dances back, drawing a sub-carbine automatic, and unleashing a salvo on the three of them. Shadow Weaver brings up a bullet ward, and Glimmer counters with and explosive charm — the seventh flame of Elm if there was such a thing.

The directional explosion sends the clone flying, as he barely manages to bring the shield in, and he rolls a few times in landing, before getting up.

“He’s wearing a suppressor,” Glimmer says.

“And he’s enhanced,” Shadow Weaver notes.

“Fuck.”

* * *

Catra spears the clone through his tactical shield, Bane extending into a full spear in her hands, blade extending into a vicious skewer. He stumbles back, as the blade retracts, and Catra grabs his shield with her backhand, forcing it aside, before unloading with both guns, punching him full of holes.

She whips the blood off Bane, holding it with her tail wrapped around the hilt, and wonders if this is what being a Scorpioni feels like.

Standing, Catra looks at Huntara’s handy-work beyond the cover wall, to find a forest of columns; there’s no sight-line to the machine guns at the other side. On the other hand, the enhanced clones are running across the tops of the pillars.

Catra takes aim and shoots one of them.

Huntara is fighting two; they are nimbly dodging all of her attempts at pit traps, and parrying every rock she throws.

Catra shoots both of them, then turns her attention back to the ones making across the tops of the columns, taking more of them out with well-placed shots.

“ _We’ve got trouble,_ ” Peekablue says.

She looks in his direction, and he points. Up above the entrance. A tunnel has been made in the stone, somehow. Catra sees a triple-clone crawling up the wall, and another emerging from the doorway.

“Scorpia! Netossa!” Catra calls out. “Sparkles, it’d be great if you could do some of that teleporting grenades you do! Clear the antechamber!”

“ _Little busy here!_ ” Netossa replies. Catra jogs back until she has a clear sight-line to Netossa, then takes aim and relieves her of her clone problem.

A lightning bolt streaks up from Scorpia’s position, again so bright Catra’s visor blocks the light, and the triple-clone is reduced to ash in an instant. The other triple-clone immediately rockets towards Scorpia, and the two engage in close-combat, Scorpia’s pincers rending its flesh, which grows back more resilient to cuts with every chunk torn off.

“ _They’ve suppressed the antechamber!_ ” Glimmer calls back.

The enhanced clones quickly wise up, and start making their way through the forest of columns at ground level. They are _fast,_ and quickly start focusing their efforts on taking her out, attempting to shoot her shadow decoy.

“ _Everyone back!_ ” Peekablue yells.

A wave of shadow flows over the columns, upwards on the wall, and over the floor, engulfing the cover wall.

Catra dismisses her pistols and channels her darkness. “On _no_ you don’t!” She stems against it, billowing wisps of inky black, and the advancing wave of malice stops.

Without her to keep them at bay, the enhanced heavy-armored clones advance.

The forest of stone columns is blown apart by the same explosion spell that opened the door.

Six additional triple-clones emerge from the hole up top, floating in the air.

Behind the wall of riot shields, acolyte-dressed clones show up by the dozens, each holding an already-manifested spell rune.

Micah comes walking through the middle of it, flanked by several Mystacor sorcerers.

“Jasmine,” he says.

One of the sorcerers step up to him, a young faun woman. Micah puts his hand oner her forehead. Then he points at Catra, and a rune forms in his hand.

A little circle, with twelve little triangles around it.

The sun. A child’s drawing.

Then a concentrated beam of light, appearing as if from nowhere, illuminates Catra, banishing her darkness. She screams, and the wave of shadow she was holding at bay engulfs the entire chamber. Everything is plunged into silence.

Catra falls to her knees, and the shadow encroaches on her, forming a little circle of bare floor where it cannot approach. Darkness is hers to command, after all.

Glimmer takes off, and the triple-clones immediately surround her, without attacking.

The darkness touches and immobilizes everyone else. Paralysis.

The woman Micah is touching collapses, perhaps dead, but the light spell remains in place.

With a few gestures, he casts another explosive spell, and the giant wall crumbles, revealing the intense blue glare of the Failsafe machine working.

Micah holds out a hand, and a clone soldier approaches, handing him a rocket launcher.

He takes aim at the hovering crystal, and fires. The rocket screams through the chamber, then explodes mid-air.

Emerging from behind one of the crystal pillars is Peekablue, hiding from the shadow in the blue glow from the machine.

Frowning, Micah gestures, and a triple-clone flies down towards him. He drops his pistol and holds up his hands.

Another clone soldier hands Micah a rocket launcher, and he takes aim again.

If it was possible to hear, he would have heard Peekablue say: “ _I win._ ”

Micah takes aim again, but this time, he is blinded by the glow. A flash of blue emanates from the crystal at the top, and the beam of light at the center winks out.

Adora falls to the ground, flat on her back.

Then, Catra rises, as if against an unseen force projected by the light. “Adora! Help!” she yells.

And that is all she needs to do.

* * *

_Adora, Help!_

Adora’s eyes spring open, and she draws a deep breath, coughing. Her chest is tight with the memory of unfathomable pain.

Rolling over, she sees Peekablue’s foot. A strong hand grasps her and hauls her to her feet.

She looks down at him, and her eye catches a blue glow in front of her sternum. Some kind of glyph hovers there.

“Now would be a _very_ good time to kick ass, love,” he says. “Preferably with a little battle cry.”

Then he spins her around, and she takes in the scene.

The whole room is engulfed in shadow. At the entrance, Micah’s small army is marching in. Triple clones are coming in by the half-dozens.

Adora calls on the starlight.

* * *

Micah blinks the daze away, attempting to regain his eyesight.

“ _For the Hope of Etheria!_ ”

“Ah, shit,” he says, recognizing the voice, just as his vision clears enough for him to see the figure standing in-between the three crystal columns.

A brilliant flash of divine light melts away his shadow-realm in an instant.

The triple-clones are systematically impaled on flying lance-like swords, pinned to the ceiling, and briefly illuminated from within before _exploding._

A storm of blades follow coming directly for them, and he ducks, shielding his face. But then, impalement fails to come; and the sound of dozens of death rattles is all around him. He looks around, to see the clones — and the clones alone — swifty skewered, parted, and reduced to giblets; magical blades cutting through armor and shields like butter.

They flow around him and the other Mystacor sorcerers, turning the whirl-wind meat grinder on the reinforcements waiting in the antechamber.

“Is everyone unscathed?” he asks.

“We are, sir! We were spared the wrath of She-Ra.” Aleister, says; his current right-hand-man, a troll of all races.

“Don’t be so sure,” Micah says.

She-Ra, resplendent, descends from the podium, approaching that troublesome wench. Melog, according to his divinations, a phantasmal menace.

She offers the other woman a hand and pulls her to her feet.

Next to them, a winged girl lands.

There can be no doubt about it. Glimmer. Micah pushes his emotions down.

Following after She-Ra, comes the Sea-Elf sharpshooter. The four of them line up, standing opposite him and his eight assistants, in the middle distance.

“Do we retreat?” Violet, Jasmine’s sister, asks.

“There is no chance we can make it away,” Micah notes. “We stand and fight; they are aiming to take prisoners. Aleister, get the suppressor, the Scorpioni Runestone wielder is unconscious.”

* * *

“Well, I can happily inform you that the others are not in fact dead,” Peekablue says. “But I won’t count on any of them waking up.”

“You three keep the others off me, my Dad is my business,” Glimmer says.

“Absolutely not,” Adora says.

“Okay, let me rephrase,” Glimmer says, “he won’t hesitate to kill anyone, except me. Eight sacrifices is enough to put both you and Catra in with the rest of the dead down here.”

Peekablue throws his rifle on the ground, then draws his pistol, and a knife. “Catra, dear, could I trouble you for a spot of invisibility?”

Catra puts a hand on his shoulder, and he vanishes from sight.

One of Micah’s men peel off from the group and heads into the antechamber.

“How do we separate the two groups?” Adora asks.

“Why said anything about that?” Glimmer says. “I’m planning on taking them all down.”

“Don’t get cocky, Sparkles, we’d hate to have to scrape you off the floor,” Catra says.

“Let’s hope they don’t have a suppressor to bring to bear,” Glimmer says, “or I might actually lose.” Then she blinks directly into the fray.

* * *

Aleister runs over to the spare suppressors, the long-range spherical-field model, and stumbles on something suddenly, falling on his face.

He tries to rise, and as he puts pressure on his left leg, sudden shooting pain erupts from it, and he falls down again, cursing. He looks at it, finding red blood beginning to stain the mesh suit under the armor. He’s been shot. There’s no shooter in sight.

“Show yourself!” he yells.

A man in a suit of blue-tinted rebel armor appears out of thin air, sea-elf going by the skin color visible through his visor. “Surrender.”

“Never!”

The man moves to attack, but Aleister casts a shockwave spell — or he tries to. The man wasn’t moving to attack him, but to swipe a knife directly through the space where his rune manifested, cleaving it before it was even fully formed.

Then he points a gun at Aleister’s face.

“All right, I surrender,” Aleister says.

“Too late for that now,” the man says and shoots him in the head.

* * *

The reaction to her appearance is immediate, and Glimmer deliberately doesn’t confuse herself by opening her eyes. She pictures perfectly her father and the seven sorcerers, as they move — some casting, others dodging out of the way.

She pictures a simple counter-spell glyph: a disrupter of the type of illusions most commonly used to cast runes; so short-range it is barely meaningful to use offensively. She pictures it four times, directly where the four casters moving to attack her are going to place their runes.

Then she teleports the air, and the puffs of light neatly draws out her diagrams.

Four offensive spell runes vanish before they are even fully drawn.

Glimmer opens her eyes.

“Impressive,” Micah notes, stepping a few paces back.

“Surrender, all of you,” Glimmer says.

“How long have you studied magic for?” Micah asks her.

Behind her, a satyr woman moves forward under a silence spell, and Glimmer sees in her mind the flamberge dagger in the woman’s hand.

The blade touches her armor plate, and vanishes in a puff of light; then Glimmer flares her wing clipping the woman in the head with her full angelic strength behind the blow, sending her sprawling.

All eight of them are wearing a set of Runestone suppressor talismans. Shadow Weaver being the mastermind behind the design of said spells, has of course passed a counter-measure onto Glimmer. A spell that disables them for but a fraction of a second. It is a complicated spell, if one doesn’t have the privilege of foregoing the casting of the rune.

“I tire of this,” Glimmer says, and closes her eyes.

She casts it seven times at once, and in the brief window of opportunity as their talismans race to re-protect them, she carves paralysis glyphs into the epidermis of the seven sorcerers surrounding her.

Six stiff bodies hit the ground.

“You have some tricks up your sleeve,” Micah says. “But you’ve never learned dark magic, daughter mine.”

“I don’t need to. I just need to prevent you from casting,” Glimmer says. “I could do that with a knife.”

Micah frowns. He gestures, and as the rune manifests, the counter-spell sigil flashes in the air in its place.

He clears his throat and tries humming, only for Glimmer to instantly cast a silencing spell. Her fingers twitch with the reflexive desire to trace the circle for the rune.

At the same time, he draws a rune behind his back, but feels the spell fizzle in his mind.

“What trickery is this?!” he shouts.

“The only reference for a Moonstone Wielder’s power you have is mom,” Glimmer says. “I can do things she never could.”

Micah draws the pistol in his belt, and pulls the trigger to a resounding click.

Glimmer opens her hand and sixteen cartridges clatter on the floor. She steps close to him.

Micah takes a deep breath. “Fine, you win. No matter; I’ve accomplished what I needed to.”

“Sorry about this, but I kinda hate you right now,” Glimmer says. Then she summons her staff and swings it directly up into his groin; hard enough, that the fact of the armored cup he is wearing, is an insignificant detail.

* * *

The battle is over in less than thirty seconds.

“Impressive,” Catra notes.

“We need to wake the others up; how long was I out in that thing?” Adora asks pointing to the Failsafe machine behind her.

“Two minutes.”

“Then we still might have time before reinforcements arrive, for you to—”

There’s a violent tremor, shaking the whole island.

“Swift Wind, update?” Adora says immediately.

“ _Ground team, you are taking orbital bombardment, you need to evac right the fuck now!_ ” Damara shouts in her ear.

Catra is already running.

“Glimmer!” Adora barks, running in the other direction. “We need to get everyone out! _Now!_ ”

Glimmer is crouched over her dad, applying a paralysis glyph to him as well. She touches him, and a puff of light is in their place; then she returns before the sparks have even faded, and flashes a telekinesis glyph, causing the seven unconscious sorcerers to tumble together in a pile.

Catra reaches Castaspella and stows both of them in her bag of tricks — safe enough, since they are wearing hazard suits — next she reaches Scorpia and lifts her up physically, since her suit doesn’t have delicate life support systems built in.

Adora meanwhile, throws Huntara over one shoulder and jogs to Netossa.

Another powerful tremor causes a section of stone to drop from the ceiling. It strikes one of the crystal pillars of the Failsafe machine with a thunderous boom, cracking it. The light inside flickers, but remains.

Glimmer appears again, blinks to Adora, and blinks the four of them away.

Catra casts one last glance at the Failsafe.

“Pick up a corpse,” Peekablue says.

Catra turns.

He points to one of the fallen enhanced clone soldiers. A victim of some kind of horrible spell, judging by the amount of blood that has been expelled from his nose and mouth.

Catra puts her foot on the corpse, and it vanishes into shadow.

“And those two,” Peekablue says, pointing to one that got domed by Catra’s gun, and one that was impaled by Parabell.

Catra picks both up.

Then Glimmer appears. She looks pale.

Catra and Peekablue take her outstretched hands.

* * *

Catra unloads Shadow Weaver and Castaspella, and sets down Scorpia. Adora does the same with Huntara and Netossa.

Glimmer sits down, pale and shaking.

“You okay there Sparkles?”

She nods. “Just a lot of long-range high-cargo blinks in a row,” she says. “I’ll be fine.”

“Captain, Lieutenant, you two might want to go see with your own eyes in the control center,” Peekablue notes.

Catra and Adora exchange a glance, then Catra opens a portal, and they step through.

Damara doesn’t reprimand her use of portals aboard. Her, Bow, and Wrodak are too captivated by the events outside.

In the distance is Mystacor’s levitating archipelago.

One of the smaller islands, the one the Failsafe crystal was buried in, is smoking from a crater taking up half it’s land area on top.

Out of the sky, a searingly bright green beam descends, and strikes the island with a terrifying energy discharge. Boulders that look like grains of sand at this distance, go flying; the shockwave ravages the adjacent islands.

Another beam comes in from a different angle, striking the same spot.

A section of the island breaks off and falls into the bay below, and the center of gravity shifts, causing the island to begin to roll over.

More beams strike it, at a steady rhythm, each blowing huge amounts of material off the island.

They all watch in mute horror, as the orbital bombardment strips the island down to a spinning, levitating hunk of rock over the course of a minute. A final double-salvo blows the remnants of it apart. The fallen debris fills the small bay below.

“Good thing you got out safely,” Bow notes.

Adora looks down herself, at the eye catching glowing spell sitting an inch over her sternum.

From two paces to her left, Catra looks at her.

* * *

Catra kneels by Scorpia, lying on the cargo bay floor. Carefully she removes her visor, and with a gentle thumb pushes her mouth open. She holds a hand out a few inches above Scorpia’s face, and calls to the shadow within.

  
_Darkness is mine to command._   


Scorpia exhales, and a wisp of shadow, like smoke, appears, curling up into something resembling a soot tag, suspended by her fingers. She crushes it.

Then Scorpia jerks forward, coughing hard.

Catra hands her a bottle of water, and Scorpia accepts it with a dextrous pincer.

“ _Thanks,_ ” she croaks, and drinks deep and greedily. She wipes her mouth on her armor. “What happened?”

“Micah nearly got us, then the machine finished fucking up Adora, and she wiped out the clones. Then Sparkles kicked some ass and we won.”

Scorpia looks at Catra. “You don’t seem happy about that.”

“Prime called an orbital strike. The entire floating island is a gravel pit now.”

“And now Adora has the only Failsafe spell,” Scorpia concludes.

Catra’s hands are clenched in fists.

“You’re worried she is going to die.”

Catra draws a shaking breath, holding back tears. “I’m weak. It’s pathetic; I’m supposed to stand by her, you know, but I just want to run away.”

Scorpia sits up properly and gets a legs under herself, rising. She gives Catra a pincer to get up. “Let me tell you something Perfect told me.”

“What?”

“Opening your heart doesn’t make you weak. But it does make you vulnerable. When you let yourself love, you risk being hurt.”

“So?”

Scorpia looks aside, smiling. “I think it’s worth it. I almost lost her, you know?”

“At Candila.”

“Yeah. And she’s… Different now. Not worse or better — I mean she’s got a lot more _appetite_ now, if you know that I mean,” Scorpia says and snickers.

Catra groans.

“But the people you love change, Wildcat. And don’t deny it, I know you love her. I’m not going to tell you what to do, other than this: do what you have to, for your own sake; take the time you need, and feel the feelings you need to feel.”

“Okay.”

Scorpia looks around, at the others, still unconscious. “Now, if you feel any better, how about you bring the rest of them back?”

* * *

“This is the most casualties we’ve ever taken,” Adora notes.

With eight captures, the entire infirmary is full. One more and they’d have to put a bed in the hallway. Damara is doing the wasp-removal surgeries, starting with Micah.

“You saved our butts,” Glimmer says, sitting next to Adora, on the floor against the wall.

“I screwed up,” Adora says. “I should have had Huntara bury us in there.”

“Then Prime would have just called in the orbital strike faster.”

Adora shakes her head. “He still needs the Runestone Wielders for the Heart, and we had four with us. Couldn’t risk it, but he knew we’d be willing to leave once either Micah destroyed the Failsafe machine —”

“Arxia,” Glimmer says.

“What?”

“It’s called the Crystal of Arxia. Well, it _was._ It was engraved in First-Ones’ writing above the door.”

“You can read those?”

“No, I recorded a picture of it with my visor, and ran it through the Swift Wind’s translator.”

“Oh. Well, Prime knew we’d only be willing to leave if Micah managed to destroy the Crystal of Arxia, or we managed to use it at least once.”

Glimmer looks down at Adora’s sternum.

“Are you going to be okay?”

“I have to. I need to save the universe with this thing.”

“Girls, I think we could have a bit of a problem,” Damara says.

Glimmer and Adora get up.

Damara removes the last of the neuro-filament probes, and throws it in the dish on the side table, on top of the charred corpse of the wasp.

“What?” Glimmer asks.

“His vitals are off, so it’s just conjecture,” Damara says. She brings the scanner down — with the extra joint in the arm, it’s a little more awkward to use, but at least it can scan a patient lying on the floor now.

The machine hums and pans over Micah.

Damara doesn’t look at any screens, as the data is readily available to her mind through her connection to the Swift Wind. “Yeah. Whatever dark magic he did to himself, screwed him up pretty good. I don’t even know how to describe it.”

“Any chance I can’t heal it?” Adora asks.

“No, no, it’s not that which concerns me. I’ve been trying to model your Starlight use and limits; this could cost you a lot, and we still need to bring the other seven back.”

“Shadow Weaver says dark magic like this changes you,” Glimmer says. “And I’m inclined to believe her. You’re going to have to purge it all to bring him back to the way he was.”

Adora looks at the other seven sorcerers. “Mom, call up Lonnie. Get her to make a long-term care-slash-prison facility for sanitized captures.”

Damara nods. “Good idea.”

“You’re just going to stow them?” Glimmer asks.

“It’s a logistically intractable problem,” Adora says. “ _I’m_ the bottleneck on our ability to de-sanitize people. Right now, I’m going to limit it to… _Significant_ personnel assets. Like Micah.”

“Thanks,” Glimmer says.

“From a tactical standpoint, I’m doing this for your sake, not his,” Adora says.

“I know.”

“And strategically, I’m purely after what he knows.”

“I know that!” Glimmer says. “But thanks anyway.”

“We _need_ some way to mass de-sanitize people, or we are never going to win this war,” Adora concludes. Then she walks up to the head-end of Micah’s bed. “Let’s see if I can bring back that nice man we met on Beast Island, yeah?”

She puts her hands on his temples, and lets herself relax, bringing forth the starlight.

Then everything goes wrong.

Micah’s mouth is thrown open, hard enough to dislocate, and a long spindly appendage shoots out, adhering to the ceiling, forming into a _hand._

From the arm, additional limbs sprout like branches on a tree, scrabbling for purchase. Eyes form on it as well, and mass flows up the first arm, bulking it out in a big lump that starts growing more arms.

“Obtainer!” Glimmer yells. “Kill it!”

Adora manifests Parabell.

The door to the infirmary busts open. “ _No! Don’t!_ ” Shadow Weaver yells, barging in.

Catra follows after.

“Don’t touch it! Don’t kill it! We need to bind it immediately or it will devour Micah!” She says, already casting a profoundly strange rune, looking more like the dental card for a predator than a circle with symbols.

The obtainer trying to exit Micah’s body now gets busy trying to get as far away from Shadow Weaver as possible, and starts dragging Micah off the bed with it.

As the spell completes, Shadow Weaver bites down on the webbing of her hand, fangs digging deep into her own flesh, and as she withdraws, her fangs start glowing purple with a dread and terrible luminance. Her jaw seems to unhinge.

Mouth open, she advances on the obtainer, and starts inhaling. The wind picks up, first a breeze, then a squall, until gale-force winds blow through the infirmary. For all it’s ferocity the only thing truly affected is the obtainer.

One by one, it’s fingers slip from the ceiling panels, or the panels are pulled entirely loose and discarded. If the eyes on it were capable of emotion, it would show panic, as it scrabbles for new purchase, finding none.

It grabs onto the bed frame, and Shadow Weaver reaches it. It throws a punch and she catches the arm in her mouth. In short order, the entire bulk of the monster flows inside her gullet like liquid, eventually leaving only a thin strand of discolored flesh between her, and Micah.

With a hand, she strikes herself on the chin, re-hinging her jaw and cutting the umbilical-like strand with her teeth. She stands there, wobbling for a moment, then collapses.

The remnants of the obtainer emanating from Micah’s mouth, turn into ash.

“Flat-lining,” Damara barks, “Adora you have to heal him, _now._ ”

Adora puts a hand on his chest, and pushes all the starlight she can into him.

Catra looks directly at the explosion of light, unflinching, the darkness in her eyes shielding her from the glare.

And then the light wanes, and Adora stumbles back, flush-red and unsteady, breathing fast and shaking. Catra leaps to her side and puts a hand on her forehead.

“Catra?” Adora says, turning towards her with blind eyes.

Catra calls on the darkness, and a wave of coolness flows over Adora.

Micah jackknifes awake with a shout.

And then nothing happens for a few seconds; thankfully.

Adora slides down the wall, to sit on the floor, Catra leans against the wall beside her, Glimmer tentatively approaches Micah’s bed. Micah sits there, holding his head for a moment.

“Dad?” Glimmer says.

Micah startles a little, pulled from his nightmarish reverie. He looks at her. “Glimmer?”

Glimmer pulls him into a tight hug.

“Oh _what have I done,_ ” he mutters.

“None of that now,” Glimmer says. And then she blinks them both away.

Damara heads over to Shadow Weaver, who is curled up on the floor, clutching her stomach. “Do you need any help?” she asks.

“ _I… Ate something that… Disagrees with me,_ ” Shadow Weaver croaks. “ _I’ll be fine. Just. Stomach. Cramps._ ” She has to force each word out.

“Let me guess,” Damara says. “You said ‘don’t kill it’ because you wanted to absorb its power, didn’t you?”

Shadow Weaver looks up at her and grins, spittle dripping from her mouth, and a crazed yet undeniably cunning glint in her eye.

“Get out of my infirmary, or I’m going to strap you to a bed and sedate you.” Damara says.

Shadow Weaver tries to stand, but eventually settles for crawling on all fours. She clears the door, leaving Damara, Adora, and Catra.


	15. Catra, Alone

Night falls on a nearly empty Swift Wind; just five souls.

Wrodak is a permanent resident by choice, Damara by nature. Shadow Weaver didn’t get very far down the hall before passing out, and spends the night in the infirmary.

Dinner is uneventful and informal.

Adora has spent the afternoon trying desperately to muster the concentration to read Serenia’s notes. Damara gave up trying to convince her to rest instead around two. She passes out in the control center around six o’clock, after having read the same paragraph nine times.

Catra directs Adora’s hover chair through the corridors, to their room, and gently rolls Adora from it over into the bed, before lying down herself. Both of them changed clothes after the battle, thankfully.

She has spent most of the day in the armoury, trying to clear her head, while doing rote maintenance on the veritable arsenal she keeps on hand at all times. All that did was give her time to think, obsess, and worry.

Adora lies there, breathing easily, the faintly-glowing Failsafe sigil moving with her sternum.

Hesitating, Catra reaches out to touch it, and her hand passes through.

She rolls onto her back. The _scene_ creeps into her head again.

It’s an image conjured by her burdened mind: herself, and Adora, there, at the heart. The light of her life, extinguished in her arms, because someone had to give up their life, and Adora fucking jumped at the chance to give hers, for everyone else’s sake.

She remembers the bullet passing through her skull. The darkness within her is no less terrifying today, than it was when she first called upon it. She’s just learned to live with the fear. But without Adora, there’s no light to banish it.

Catra shakes her head, and wipes her eyes, drawing a shaky breath. She looks over at Adora. _Do what you have to, for your own sake._

She gets up.

* * *

“Catra?”

Catra spins around, trying to hide the fabricator control panel from Damara — a futile endeavor. “Damara, hi! What— what can I do for you?” she says, with forced cheerfulness.

“I know you’re planning to leave.”

“What?”

“I can see what you’re fabricating.”

“I—” Catra says, looking away.

Damara walks up to her. “I’m not going to stop you.”

Catra looks at her.

Damara looks to the side. “I know the odds of survival; I’m more familiar with Serenia’s work than anyone else in the world.”

She takes a deep breath. “Adora… My daughter… Is going to die. I think she’s beginning to realize it herself. The risk she’ll have to put herself in to save the universe. You’re not the only one who wishes it was any different. So if you want to run, I’m not going to stop you; just…”

“Just what?”

“Don’t just vanish in the night. That would break her; or worse, she’d set out to find you. Tell her why. And if you’re leaving for good, please say goodbye to all the people who are going to miss you, okay?”

Catra shakes her head. “I’m not leaving-leaving. I just can’t be here anymore; I can’t be the Lieutenant. I can’t be here when she— The resistance needs me.”

“I understand. Take care of yourself.”

Damara vanishes.

A beeping noise informs Catra that her spare outfit has finished fabricating. She wipes her eye, and heads to the delivery receptacle.

* * *

Adora wakes with a start, to an empty bed. Her communicator is lights up the room, with a notification light.

She crawls over to it, to review: it’s a voice message, from Catra.

“ _Hey, Adora…_ ”

_Long pause. Sigh._

“ _I’m not leaving you a note and running off to join the enemy, don’t worry._ ”

_Another pause._

“ _But I am leaving. It’s— it’s not you, it’s me. I can’t, Ad. I can’t just hang around and be your right hand, knowing that you’re gonna…_ ”

_Deep breath._

“ _I can’t do that. I’m not going to survive it. I’m not going to run away or anything, but… I need to strike out on my own for a while. Help the resistance in other ways._ ”

_Pause._

“ _And I can’t stand that Shadow Weaver has somehow made things come out in her favor. We’re doing her bidding again, and I know it’s not because it’s her, but because what she suggests is the pragmatic and effective thing to do. But I still hate it._ ”

_Tapping noise._

“ _Promise me, whe she outlives her usefulness? Get rid of her, okay? And… Don’t come look for me. Please._ ”

The message cuts out.

“No. No-no-no!” Adora says. She hits play again

“ _Hey, Adora…_ ” _Long pause. Sigh._ “ _I’m not leaving you a note and running off to join the enemy, don’t worry._ ” _Another pause._ “ _But I am leaving. It’s— it’s not you, it’s me. I can’t, Ad. I can’t just hang around and be your right hand, knowing—_ ”

“Damn it Catra!” Adora yells, tears already streaming down her face.

She rolls out of bed, and to her feet, barges through the door into the hallway. “Mom!” she yells. “Damara! Please!”

Damara appears.

“Where is she?!” Adora says.

“She took a portal; I know the coordinates, but I don’t know if she’s still—”

“Open one. Now.”

Damara doesn’t gesture. A portal opens right there in the hallway, and Adora runs through, into a section of the Whispering Woods, somewhere.

And there, a few paces away, is Catra, under the moonlight from the green moon.

She sees Adora, and turns to run.

“Catra! Stop!” Adora sprints after her, barefoot in the soft underbrush. She leaps, and with a burst of starlight, gains enough speed on Catra to catch up and tackle her.

They tumble to the ground, breaking bushes and bending roots.

“Get. Off me!” Catra grunts, and shoves Adora off her with terrifying strength, but Adora grabs her by the wrists.

“You were just going to _leave?!_ ” Adora yells.

Catra wrenches her hands from Adora’s grasp, but doesn’t back away. “Yeah! I don’t think I could have been much clearer!”

“Is it because of something Shadow Weaver said?”

Catra recoils. “No! Why? What gave you that impression?”

“She — she said she thought my judgment was impeded.”

“Because of me,” Catra says reading between the lines.

Adora nods.

“Well, that works out great! Then you can go save the world without me there to compromise your judgment. I don’t _understand_ why you listen to her, Adora. You are _letting_ yourself be manipulated!” Catra says, sternly.

Adora puts a hand on Catra’s shoulder. “You said it yourself, Cat. As much as I hate it, she’s right sometimes.”

Catra draws away. “Why are you like this?!”

“What?”

“Why do you always have to sacrifice everything for everyone else?”

Adora recoils.

“When do _you_ get to chose?” Catra says, and pauses, to wipe her eye. “What do _you_ want, Ad?”

“I—” Adora falters, her words die in her mouth. “I have to do this, Catra,” she says, voice on the verge of breaking. “I’m the only one who can.”

“Then do it. If that’s what you want, then that’s what you’ll always choose, isn’t it?” Catra says, and turns away. “But I don’t have to stay and watch it happen. I can’t. I’m not that strong.”

“Catra please. Stay,” Adora says.

Catra freezes. Never before has she heard such raw emotion in Adora’s voice.

“I need you.”

Her back is turned to Adora, and that’s a good thing, because then Adora doesn’t see her face contort in agony; on the verge of breaking down. She takes a deep breath, like Perfuma taught her. “No, you don’t. You get by just fine without me, really.”

Then Catra turns invisible.

“Catra, wait.”

No answer.

“Catra, _please!_ ” Adora tries again, desperate.

“ _Catra!_ ” she howls, tears streaming down her cheeks.

She falls to her knees, and hammers the soft ground with her fists in impotent rage.

* * *

The loneliness is crushing. The sheer knowledge that her bed is conspicuously too large.

Adora spends half the night hugging her pillow and crying, the other, fitfully sleeping.

Truth has been staring her in the face the whole time, too bright to look at like the sun. Too hot to even approach let alone touch, like a glass kiln.

She’s in love with Catra.

And now… Now they are never going to be together.

At some point, practical matters take over, and emotions run their course. Adora gets out of bed to nature’s call, freshens up, and heads to the mess to sate her insistent hunger.

Wrodak is there, already eating, looks up as she enters, and decides _not_ to greet her. He just gets up, and heads into the kitchen. Adora looks after him.

He returns shortly after with a tray; a plate of rice and grilled vegetables, and a rare delicacy Adora hasn’t seen since she left the Horde: deep-fried crickets. There’s a glass of milk, and one of juice. He hands it to her, and goes back to his seat.

“Thanks,” Adora mutters.

Wrodak gives her a thumb up.

She takes a seat in the other end of the mess. Not that she doesn’t want to talk to him; she just doesn’t want to talk to anybody, and Wrodak apparently understands.

Halfway through the meal, the only other living occupant of the Swift Wind enters the mess.

Shadow Weaver.

Adora looks down into her plate, and keeps eating.

Still, that walking aneurysm decides to take a seat at one of the only two occupied tables in the large room.

“Is Catra still sleeping?” Shadow Weaver asks.

Adora looks up at her. There’s not a hint of malice or snideness in her expression, but that doesn’t say a lot.

“Catra left.”

“Oh dear. I am so sorry to hear that.” Shadow Weaver says. “Perhaps it is for the best. You have hurt one another more than enough, over the years. She has always been a source of confusion and distraction—”

“Do you take _pleasure_ in doing this? In ruining people? Ruining any chance they could _ever_ be happy?” Adora asks.

Shadow Weaver pauses, and frowns. “I don’t understand where this hostility is coming from; I do what I have to. Always have. Always will.”

“Keep telling yourself that, maybe it’ll be true one day,” Adora replies.

“This is about Catra, isn’t it?”

“No,” Adora says. “This is about you. You have some kind of plan. Some kind of angle you’re working. You’re after power, and willing to put yourself in a lot of pain to do so. But you’re not willing to take the Failsafe to the Heart. Let me guess, you had planned to suggest escorting me there? And then what, use me to channel all the magic of Etheria at once?”

Shadow Weaver sputters, but there’s just a tiny moment of hesitation. “That’s a preposterous accusation!”

“That’s not a ‘no.’ I’m going to assume I’m not far off.”

“Adora, please, be reasonable!”

“Reasonable?” Adora says. “Reasonable.” She leans in closer. “This _is_ reasonable. If I were in an unreasonable mood, we wouldn’t be having this conversation, you would be _dead._ ”

Shadow Weaver shakes her head. “Such childish aggression.”

“No. No, this is on you. We had a _compact,_ remember that?”

“One chance. No redemption. Kindness undeserved,” Shadow Weaver summarizes, “yes, I recall.”

Adora leans back. “Then if you’re so smart, you know what you did wrong.”

“I have outlived my usefulness, have I?” Shadow Weaver says snarling. “Are you going to kill me now?”

“Kill you?” Adora asks. “The terms were that I hand you over to Mystacor, for prosecution. And since the Mystacorian government is in exile, I’m instead going to go to the security council meeting later this morning and recommend them to treat you as a liability to the continued operation of the resistance.”

Shadow Weaver laughs. “I’ll argue my case, and then it’s my word against yours.”

“No. You are not going to participate in resistance operations anymore.”

“You don’t have the authority to demand _or_ enforce that.”

“When are you going to start thinking of me as a _theat,_ Shadow Weaver? You are _not_ going to participate in resistance operations anymore, _or I will kill you._ ”

“You _need_ me, stupid girl,” Shadow Weaver says icily.

“Between Micah, Castaspella, Glimmer, Sweet Bee, and the dozens and dozens other competent mages and sorcerers in the resistance, no, Shadow Weaver. We do not. Damara?” Adora says.

Damara manifests.

“Escort Shadow Weaver off this craft. If she ever sets foot here again, _shoot her._ ”

Damara looks at Shadow Weaver.

Two machine guns descend from the ceiling and take aim. A portal opens behind her. “You heard her,” Damara says.

Shadow Weaver gets up, and takes her breakfast tray. Adora reaches over and grabs the lip of it. “Nah-ah, take-out food is for welcome guests only.”

Shadow Weaver scoffs, lets go, and with a swirl of her robe, strides quickly through the portal.

* * *

There’s a security council meeting later that day.

The seventy or so people in the decision-making structure of Refuge III’s military make their way inside the auditorium, submitting to inspection by otoscope. Lonnie approaches Adora in the loosely defined queue.

“Hey. You look like shit.”

“I feel like shit too. Listen, can you arrange a liaison contact for Catra?”

“Sure? What’s going on?”

“She’s struck out on her own.”

“Rough. Did you have a big fight or something?”

Adora shakes her head. “It’s not like that. Well, it’s a little bit like that.”

Lonnie pats her on the arm. “If you want to talk; you know you have plenty of friends, right?”

Adora nods.

* * *

“There’s a few things on the program right from the start,” Lonnie says, addressing the crowd. “First, She-Ra has a debrief concerning yesterday’s operation in Mystacor.”

Adora gets out of her seat, and heads down the wide stairs to the lectern.

“Hello, everyone,” she says. "First, I would like to recommend that Shadow Weaver be considered a potential liability to the resistance. She should not consult in any operational matters from here on out.

"That said, Yesterday early morning, the Starlight Brigade flew an asset-retrieval infiltration mission to Mystacor. The goal was to retrieve a sorcerous artifact called the Crystal of Arxia.

"The Crystal of Arxia is a weapon, designed to destroy the Heart of Etheria without collateral damage. It casts a spell, a ‘Failsafe,’ that is imparted onto a willing recipient, to then carry to the Heart at the center of the planet. There the spell will activate, disabling the Heart weapon.

"The goal of our mission was to retrieve the Crystal as a whole, for the resistance to later use at their leisure. We failed at that. In part due to the physical size of the artifact, in part because Prime destroyed the Mystacorian island the Crystal was hidden in, using orbital bombardment.

“All is not lost, however. We have obtained the construction plans for the Crystal of Arxia, and construction of a backup has already begun. Additionally, before its destruction, I managed to impart the spell onto myself.”

Adora gestures to her sternum, where the small glowing sigil of First-Ones’ writing hovers.

"The problem then, is time. Horde Prime is currently drilling in the Southern Reach, aiming to reach the cthonic infrastructure directly, likely aiming to forcefully overtake it. If he is successful in this, he _will_ be able to activate it.

"Construction of the backup Crystal of Arxia weapon is slated to complete in late fall. Prime will undoubtedly succeed before that. This means I will have to travel to the center of Etheria though the Dagon Rock shaft before that.

“The area around Dagon Rock has been Horde territory since the fall of Refuge II, and so there will be heavy resistance.”

Adora sighs.

“There’s no delicate way to put this: disabling the Heart is fatal to the carrier of the Failsafe. Being She-Ra, I stand the best chance of survival, but even for me, the odds are highly unfavorable.”

There’s deathly silence in the auditorium.

“I can’t plan this mission. I can’t plan my own suicide.”

She takes a deep breath.

“As a closing remark, Catra has resigned her commission as Lieutenant of the Starlight Brigade. I’ve requested that a resistance liaison will be provided for her; just so you all know if you need to get in touch with her.”

Then she leaves the lectern, and heads for the door.

There’s a long pause before Lonnie calls the next speaker.

* * *

Clawdia is woken up by the gentle shake of Leijon’s hand on her shoulder.

“ _Someone’s at the door,_ ” Leijon whispers, holding a pistol in her hand. Thankfully she hasn’t been sleeping nude.

Clawdia is instantly awake. “ _Put the gun away, you paranoid idiot!_ ”

She swings her legs out of bed, and gets up, grabbing a robe to throw over her nightgown, then heads to the door, through the sparsely furnished apartment.

Through the peephole, she sees a dark, tall figure in the stairwell.

“Who is it?” she says through the door.

“ _Mom?_ ”

Clawdia hurries to undo the chain and work the thumb-turn.

Out there, in the dark — how she has managed to ascend the stairs without triggering the motion-sensitive lights is unknown — stands Catra, wearing a dark cloak.

“Can— can we talk? I Know it’s late.”

The raw emotion in her voice is heart-wrenching.

“Come in,” Clawdia says. “Turn on the light, Leij.”

Catra ducks through the door.

Clawdia looks at her for a beat, and then by motherly instinct, knows exactly what’s needed.

“Come here,” she says, and pulls Catra into a hug.

And then the tears come.

* * *

“Catra, dear girl,” Leijon says. “It might sound strange, but I know a thing or two about what you’re going through.”

Catra, eyes reddened from crying, and emotionally fatigued, looks at her. There’s a small pile of spent tissues on the sofa table, and Clawdia is sitting next to her, with an arm over her shoulders — or as much as she can reach. Clawdia is a diminutive woman, Catra is very much not.

“See, I was young once, and there was a war going on, a real ugly one. I saw my fiancé ship out to the front, and return in a pine box.”

Catra nods. “Condolences,” she mutters.

“But I learned something from it; waiting for three months in limbo. You have to keep going. And you’re not running away blindly to hide in a hole; am I remiss in thinking you came here for advice?”

“The resistance needs me,” Catra says.

“For now, get some sleep. You can take the sofa. In the morning we’ll figure out precisely _what_ the resistance needs from you.”

* * *

Damara re-appears back on the Swift Wind, directly in front of Adora’s room.

She knocks.

No answer.

Then she decides to commit a spot of privacy violation, and bids the door to open with executive override.

Adora is there, lying in the bed with her boots on, staring into the ceiling.

“You walked out.”

She nods.

Damara enters, and lets herself fall into the hover chair by the desk.

“I’m gonna die,” Adora says.

Damara doesn’t say anything.

“How did you do it?”

“Hm?”

“Come to terms with your own mortality. When you used the Heart to hide Etheria,” Adora says.

“I didn’t,” Damara replies. “I was terrified the whole way though.”

“Great.”

“Entrapta and Hordak are back,” Damara notes.

“I saw.”

“They managed to recover what’s left of Light Hope. Which isn’t much, but maybe it’ll come in useful. I’ve access to some of her still-intact data banks now.”

“That’s good.”

Damara doesn’t press it. A week ago, Adora would have been interested to hear details.

“Sweet Bee acknowledged the logistical issue of de-sanitizing people. She’s opening for suggestions. Entrapta and Hordak jumped on that, so I’ve taken over the Light Hope project.”

“Hm.”

“I’ll come check in on you in an hour, okay?”

Adora turns her head to look at Damara. “I’m sorry.”

“For what?”

“It feels like I’m supposed to hug you and cry or something, but I just don’t have any tears left. I just feel dead inside.”

Damara nods. “That’s fine. Entirely natural.” She smiles. “Is there anything you want to talk about.”

Adora looks back up at the ceiling. “I love her. I have for a long time now.”

“Catra.”

“Yeah.”

“And now… Now she’s gone.”

“She might just need some time,” Damara says.

Adora shakes her head. “I don’t _have_ time, mom.”

“Well, there is a chance you survive it; I think you should operate on the assumption that you’re going to. Haven’t you done plenty of risky things and come out alive?”

“She-Ra died three times during… My tenure,” Adora notes. “The third, she only came back through a literal miracle. What are the odds?”

“Hm?”

“You said you’ve got Light Hope’s data banks? And the construction plans for the Failsafe, right? What are the current best-estimate of the odds that I’m going to survive?”

Damara looks away for a moment. “Two hundred and thirty-seven to one. Against.”

Adora rolls over on her side, facing away from Damara.

“I’ll come check up on you in an hour,” Damara repeats. Then she vanishes.

* * *

Catra’s communicator chimes, waking her.

She sits up, blanket sliding off her, and orients herself. She’s in Clawdia and Leijon’s apartment, which is currently empty.

It’s almost noon.

There’s a note on the dining table:

> _Gone for groceries. Back around noon._
> 
> _— Mom._

Catra checks her communicator.

It’s a request for her to call back, from Double Trouble.

She accepts it.

The screen flickers, and Double Trouble’s face appears.

“Hi, Catra.”

“Double Trouble. You usually call me ‘kitten,’ why the formality?”

“Because I am calling in a professional capacity. I heard you’re going solo.”

Catra looks away.

“Hey, there’s no shame in needing a change of pace,” Double Trouble says. “I’ve volunteered to be your security council liaison. I’m not going to tell you what to do, but if you need anything, information or help, I’ll see what I can do, okay?”

“Thanks, DeeTee,” Catra says.

“I thought you could use a familiar, non-judgmental face to fill that role. You look rough.”

Catra nods. “What— is there anything we need? The resistance, I mean?”

“Hm.” Double Trouble rubs their chin. “One of the things that gets brought up a lot is the actual size of the resistance. We have census of Refuge, of course, and some statistics about sanitization in the broader populace, but there could very well be a well of untapped manpower waiting in the wings, operating in independent cells, either ignorant of the existence of, or incapable of joining our little club.”

“You’re thinking I should go recruiting.”

Double Trouble nods. “What, does it sound outlandish?”

“Not at all. I even have a pretty good idea of where to start.”

* * *

Walking the streets of Capital is a strangely harrowing experience.

At once, this is _her city._ The galactic Horde setting up what amounts to planetary diplomatic headquarters in the Hordelands has not changed that; so far as Catra can discern, that is just a change of management in the minds of the citizens.

Everything is just the same as it has always been, except perhaps that for the first time in living memory, the military is disarming. Cars in the streets, people going to and fro, money changing hands.

But at the same time, anywhere outside of the protective bubble that is Sweet Bee’s spheres of influence, danger abounds. Not for her, but for others. Sanitization is a constant threat.

Catra has shrunk down to her pre-Melog size.

She checks the street signs, and takes out the little plastic cup with a die in it, giving it a shake. Following the direction given by the pips on the rolled face, she heads down one street, and then into an alley, passing a stinking dumpster.

The door is nominally the back-entrance to a butcher shop.

Catra knocks thrice.

The door opens on a chain, and a gruff-looking feliform man greets her. Tall, burly, and striped. “What.”

“I’m here about the meeting,” Catra says.

“New face. Got a reference?”

“Leijon can vouch for me.”

He closes the door, and there’s the sound of the chain being undone. Then it opens fully. “C’min.”

Catra heads in, entering the abattoir, stopping by a line of meat hooks re-purposed as a coat rack, to remove her coat and hang it. She’s in slacks, shirt-sleeves and a waistcoat, all in various shades of red. Her hair is done in a ponytail.

The door to the administration offices is ajar, and voices can be heard from within.

She heads in, finding the break room, where seven people are hanging out; all of them feliform.

“Who’re you?”

The speaker is a man, grey-furred, lanky, and looking like he came straight from a shift at a factory. Judging by his position in the room, he seems to be the leader.

“Catra,” Catra introduces herself. “I’m an associate of Leijon’s. She called ahead, I believe.”

“Ah, that troublemaker,” one of the others say, a woman about Leijon’s age, pure white fur and quite finely dressed.

“She did,” the man says. “I’m Concrete, and currently these insufferable people tolerate my decision-making. Now, I’m not going to trust any newcomer, even an associate of Leijon’s, before you’ve proven yourself.”

“Fair,” Catra says. “Before we begin —” she digs through her pocket for an otoscope. “Anybody got a bug up their nose?”

“What?”

“Wow, you guys are really out of the loop.”

* * *

Everyone is, thankfully, clean. Catra collects the eight little plastic caps for the otoscope, and throws them in the dustbin.

“So, what was that about?” Concrete asks.

“Our new galactic overlords like to shove mind-control bugs up people’s noses,” Catra says. “Basically, don’t trust anyone you haven’t personally put an otoscope up the nose of.” She looks around the room. “How are you actually expecting this is going to go?”

“Weirdly enough,” the white-furred woman says, “the new administration might be more amenable than Chancellor Hordak’s cabinets ever were.”

Catra shakes her head. “Amazing.”

“What?”

“Not to sound derogatory, but that is an awfully hopeful stance,” Catra says. “It’s never going to happen. Ever. Hordak was bad, sure, but he was _reasonable._ Horde Prime is a _cult leader._ He doesn’t have policy, he has dogma.”

Silence.

“I came here, because you are all fairly well-connected people in the movement, and I have a plea, if you’ll hear it.”

“We’ll always hear it, dear,” the woman says.

“Thank you, miss—”

“Icewine.”

Catra nods. “First of all, we’re thinking too small. You’ve heard there’s other worlds out there, right?”

“It’s been all over the news, yes,” Concrete says. “Public information campaigns from the new administration.”

“There’s one for us,” Catra says. “Us Magicats? We’re not from Etheria, originally. We came here with the First-Ones, over a thousand years ago. There’s a _planet_ out there, with our name on it.”

“That’s a wonderful tall-tale, dear,” Icewine says.

“It’s called Krytis, and I’ve walked on it.”

Concrete snorts. “What, you’ve been to space or something?”

Catra looks at him. “You really don’t recognize me, do you?”

He shakes his head.

“I am ex-General Catra, formerly director of the Special Operations Forces of the Horde Army. Among my _many_ accomplishments, I enacted a _coup_ against Supreme Chancellor Hordak, and took control of the military away from him.”

“Absurd,” Concrete says.

“Wait, I think — I think I do recognize her,” Icewine says. “I might have seen her at one of those military parades!”

“I’ve also been to several political mixers and social events,” Catra says. "Anyway, when the sky broke, I happened to be standing next to Chancellor Hordak, after we had just had a little fight to the death. He was swept up into space, and I was brought along on accident. And there I found out the truth.

“We come from a distant world that Horde Prime destroyed. And it has been lying in wait for our return. Ever heard of She-Ra?”

There’s a round of nods.

“She-Ra is the magical defender of Etheria. Krytis has magical defenders too, and since I happened to be the first Magicat setting foot on the place in eight hundred years or so…”

She smirks.

“ _For the Vengeance of Krytis, Darkness is Mine to Command,_ ” she says, entirely for the theatrics.

She lets darkness come over her, and shifts back to her true size, into her usual outfit, and draws Bane just for good measure.

“So, what, you’re some kind of chosen hero?” Concrete says. “Color me skeptical, it’s a very impressive trick, but no amount of chopping people up with that sword is going to get us anywhere.”

“How level-headed of you,” Catra says. “I’m not here representing only myself. I’m with a little something we like to call the _Resistance._ Do you want to come help the people who are fighting for freedom in the universe?”


	16. Others, Elsewhere

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cw: alcoholism, mugging, gunshot wounds

The call comes down the line, from the Nebularian Roost, directly from the council of Space Captains. It’s a call for help, of a sort. They are going to launch a counter-invasion of their home-world, given the reduced Horde presence in their system.

> _If you can, and if you have plans in place, waiting for the time to strike, now is the time. Coordinate with us, divide Prime’s attention. We may strike a decisive blow._

* * *

There’s a knock on the door, which is strange, considering the fact that Sweet Bee is in her secret and well-secluded lair, and not at _home._

She puts the jar down on the desk, and the wasp inside skitters around for a bit. She gets up and saunters over to the door, opening it.

“Hello, Sweet Bee? I’m Entrapta, I don’t believe we’ve ever actually been formally introduced; I was wondering, would you say that you’re the pre-eminent expert on the slaver wasps?”

“Uh,” Sweet Bee says. “Yes?”

“Great! That simplifies things, I heard your call for suggestions and I have a promising lead. I think I have detected the communications system by which Horde Prime controls his subjects directly through the sanitization wasps, and I need your help to map it. Oh, have you met my husband, Hordak?”

Entrapta steps aside; the bulk of her hair, her powered exoskeleton, and the tentacle-arms on her back has entirely occluded Hordak behind her.

He is much less encumbered, wearing a simple black dress that flatters his physique, and carrying a large briefcase. “We have,” he says, holding out a clawed hand. “It is good to see you are well, Princess.”

“And to you,” Sweet Bee says. She knows well he is no longer Chancellor.

Stepping back, Sweet Bee gestures for them to enter. “If I might cast humility aside, I am the pre-eminent expert on entomology in general, not just the wasps. They are the most fascinating creature I have ever come across, I’ll admit.”

She grabs a curtain and pulls it aside, revealing an enormous shelf, stocked with glass jars, each containing a single captured wasp. Hundreds. Thousands.

“My most significant findings, if I say so myself, is two-fold. First, that they do not reproduce; they are clones, much like Horde Prime’s soldiers. Second, that they are fragile and relatively short-lived; that is why we do not see roving swarms looking to sanitize bystanders.”

“Of course,” Hordak says. “All the wasps we’ve seen so far have been formed in off-world hive-engines, and transported here. They are ill-suited to Etheria’s conditions; once he lands a hive-engine here and starts producing them here, we’ll see roving swarms.”

Entrapta looks at Hordak. “That’s _incredibly_ interesting!”

“Yes. You need to remember to tell me where we’re going and why,” Hordak says with a smile, gently chiding his wife. “That way I can tell you more interesting things, sooner.”

“Right! Sorry, I need to get used to having a lab partner again.”

“I thought Damara had filled that role in my absence,” Hordak remarks.

“Oh, no-no, she’s been more of an assistant, and on occasion _patient,_ since she _is_ a spacecraft, and I’m her chief engineer.”

“Oh.”

“Being partners is about complementary skill-sets, and… You complement me.”

Hordak blushes. “That is a very kind thing to say. Thank you.”

“It’s a fact,” Entrapta says with a smile, and takes Hordak’s hand.

Sweet Bee snickers. “Before we begin, allow me to observe hospitality. Can I get you anything? Tea? Coffee?”

* * *

Wrodak spends most of his time flying simulations, and generally hanging around the Swift Wind. The Starlight Brigade is his family, now, and it feels good to belong. Most of them are on shore leave, though.

Damara is always there, the Swift Wind is _her,_ after all, and Adora is technically also there, but spends all her time in her room. Wrodak tries to help her in the little ways he can; she’s not in a good place, mentally, that much even he can see.

Hordak and Entrapta are there too, in the nights but spend the days out doing field work. Concerning his brother; the prospect of building rapport is perhaps a little intimidating, still.

Sometimes he talks to the housekeeping drones. Which is silly. But perhaps the Grayskull Squadron named one of them Emily with good reason.

Outside of the Starlight Brigade, Wrodak has managed to make two friends. It’s not easy being a free Clone in a society that hates and fears the person you’re a clone of. Starla has had a lot on her mind, since the call to action from her home, and Wrodak knows well what it is like with such split loyalties.

His other friend was total happenstance, an older feliform woman, who overheard him explain himself to some nosy passersby one day. Wise, if Wrodak had to describe her. She gave him the names of _several_ volumes of writing he might want to get copies of from the library.

And he did.

He got a lot of other books too. Hordak’s, for instance, and some introductory texts on physics. This was what clued him in to the fact that emulating Bow was probably unwise.

Bow flies the Swift Wind as if it is an arrow. His natural understanding of ballistics, his effortless reading of the trajectory charts; none of that is really teachable.

Wrodak is developing his own style of piloting. One grounded in hard numbers, custom-tuned scenario simulations, and ‘flying by the numbers.’ His virtual space doesn’t even have an external view; it is all orbit diagrams. He’s learning to fly by the navigation ball, rather than by eye.

He’s also immersing himself in the finer details of the point defense system, and drafting proposals to install an actual main gun in the Swift Wind like they considered on Krytis. It would be a lot faster, now that they can rely on the resistance’s manufacturing.

The thought comes to him in the dead of night, during his leisure reading of a textbook on orbital physics — the actual algebra and laws and numbers. It is the kind of pure inspiration that is just ‘what if we combined known quantities A and B?’

He gets out of bed. Like Hordak, and all their brethren, his need for sleep is very limited. He grabs his magenta shirt, and the silk skirt he currently considers leisure wear, and heads out into the hall barefoot.

Not wanting to possibly disturb Entrapta’s sleep, he checks the infirmary first, and lucks out: the light is on in the adjacent office.

Wrodak heads in, and knocks on the door frame. “Brother Hordak?”

Hordak looks up from the medical journal he is reading. “Ah. Wrodak. What can I help you with?” He spins in the chair, lounging casually.

Hordak looks so very _stylish_ in those black dresses, in Wrodak’s opinion. It’s what inspired him to don a skirt in the first place.

“Well, I was hoping you could help me go over some numbers. You are the original designer of the portal devices, after all,” Wrodak says.

That gets Hordak’s attention, he sits up straight. “What do you have in mind?”

“The thought came to me: we are under ‘orbital occupation.’ Our reviled big brother maneuvers his forces with impunity above us, to among other ends, destroying that island of Mystacor. Not even She-Ra at her fullest power could make inroads on his numbers.”

“I’m aware. Go on.”

Wrodak nods. Of course Hordak would know such banalities. “To summarize my assumptions: the mean orbital velocity of a spacecraft in low-Etherian orbit is roughly eight thousand miles per hour of surface-relative speed, which is again roughly seven times the speed of a rifle bullet.”

Hordak tilts his head with interest.

“A portal opened from a portal device on the surface, in a rest frame relative to the surface, has to a first approximation a surface-relative speed of zero. Any object dropped through such a portal will be on a free-fall trajectory of the same surface-relative speed.”

A smile spreads on Hordak’s face.

Wrodak can’t help but grin as well.

“If an orbiting spacecraft were to impact such an object, it would thus be at a relative velocity of seven times that of a rifle bullet. With sufficiently massive objects, the devastation could be made arbitrarily complete. Opening such a portal safely requires as far as I can tell, merely accounting for the pressure differences; any competently constructed air lock system should be sufficient.”

Wrodak pauses for effect before the punch-line: “Is the solution to our orbital occupation problem as simple as _dropping rocks though a portal?_ ”

Hordak gets up, and with a spring in his step comes up to Wrodak, putting a hand on his shoulder. “Brilliant. You are better versed in the simulator than I, shall we go test it against the most complete understanding of physics the First-Ones could conjure up? By my mental arithmetic, a pound of rocks should be worth it’s own weight in high explosive, but I might be wrong.”

“You’re willing to help?”

“Brother,” Hordak says, “I will _write you a manual of arms_ if this works, _and_ present it to the security council, with full credits to you.”

* * *

They are putting the last touches on the dinner, in the kitchen of the Swift Wind. Nothing fancy, but catering options is understandably limited in Refuge III.

“Do you think she’s going to show?” Bow asks Glimmer.

“You know, she’s _on the ship,_ you could go ask her?” Glimmer says.

“I doubt Adora has the energy,” Wrodak says. “Lady Damara calls it ‘depressive mood’ and assures me she means no ill will.”

“Thanks, Wrodak,” Bow says. He isn’t actually helping — Glimmer and Wrodak have it well in hand, like a well-oiled machine — instead he is mostly fiddling with his bow-tie.

“Bow, go ask her, please,” Glimmer says, pointing with a ladle. “Or I will take that bow tie away from you.”

Bow hurries out, and down the hall. The tuxedo he’s wearing is assuredly high Hordelands’ fashion, and he never _was_ quite fond of Brightmoon formal wear, but this is somehow _worse._

He knocks on Adora’s door. “Captain, you in there?”

No answer.

“ _She’s in the simulator,_ ” Damara informs him over the intercom.

“Thanks,” Bow says, and heads out of the crew quarters. He reaches the simulator, in its usual default state: the gym. Even before reaching the door he hears the sound of strikes on leather.

Adora’s there, going at it with a punching bag, sending the two hundred pound sack of sand jiggling about on its chain with every bone-pulverizing strike.

Sweat runs off her, her ponytail’s come undone, and the bandages on her knuckles are bloody.

Her pace picks up and the leather tears under the force of the blows; she finishes the combo with a roundhouse kick the snaps the chain suspending the bag. It tumbles into the middle distance, spewing sand everywhere.

Adora inspects her knuckles, and with a flash of starlight, corrects the damage.

“Again,” she says.

The punching bag on the floor pops like a soap bubble, and a new, intact one appears on the hook.

Adora takes a stance.

“Hey Captain,” Bow says.

“Bow,” Adora replies.

“What’s that punching bag ever done to you?”

Adora relaxes her stance and turns to him. “What do you need?” she asks, and as she says it, she deflates.

There’s dark circles under her eyes, and her face is puffy from crying.

“I was wondering if you wanted to take a break from feeling shitty, and come to dinner with us.”

Adora looks away. “I’ll just poison the mood.”

“I guarantee, you won’t,” Bow says.

“This is yours and Glimmer’s day,” Adora says. “All I can think about is…”

“Catra?”

“I was going to say _death,_ but yeah. Her too.”

“What’s Damara’s odds?”

“She’s stopped telling me.”

Adora takes up a boxing stance, and gets her breathing under control.

“Look, the offer stands. I’ll take it even if you don’t shower.”

“Congratulations,” Adora says. “Tell Glimmer I said so.”

Bow nods and heads back.

She’s right, in a way. His mood is a little lower as he heads back to the kitchen. He passes though the mess, where the usual tables with integrated benches have been replaced by a single round table wit

“No Adora?” Glimmer asks.

He shakes his head, and checks his watch. “I’ll go welcome the guests. They’re bound to arrive any minute.”

* * *

Bow stands, and raises his glass. “Now that everyone is seated —” there’s a bit of a scrabble as everyone without wine in their glass passes around a bottle of white “— and the entrées are lined up, I’d like to say a few words.”

“You just want us to suffer,” Glimmer says.

“Hush. First, thanks to Wrodak for helping with the food.”

Wrodak waves from the kitchen, doffing his apron.

“He’s not staying, and not because we didn’t invite him.”

Bow adopts a somber tone. “We realize it’s a little strange of a time to do this, but Glimmer and I agree it’s better now than potentially never. Thank you all for coming; and our first toast I suppose should be to absent friends.”

George and Lance are there of course, and with them as many of their boys as they could scrounge up with such short notice: Blade, Pike, Ax, Treb, and Kris. The full set will of course be there for the _wedding._

To Glimmer’s great delight, though not much surprise, Angella and Micah have come as well. Micah is still skittish and jumping at the shadows, but at least his good mood has returned.

Mermista and Sea Hawk have found a babysitter, and Netossa is drinking for two since Spinnerella isn’t. Castaspella had asked to bring a plus-one and got gently discouraged, lest they’d have to seat five additional people. This dinner is for family only.

Bow holds out a hand for Glimmer; she takes it and stands as well, looking at him with deep fondness. Almost without thinking she wraps a wing around him.

“It’s the simple truth, that Glimmer and I are in love,” Bow says. “So we have decided to marry. Once this all blows over, and there’s a moment for Castaspella to organize it, we’re going to have a proper royal wedding.”

“And,” Glimmer adds, “if anyone asks, it might be that we only admitted out love for one another a few weeks ago, when we were out among the stars, but Bow and I have been best friends for over a decade. I’ve always adored him, and he, I. It’s as if fate decided long ago we should be together, and for whatever reason we only realized that now.”

She raises her glass, and everyone follows.

A small fleet of hovering trays serve the entrées, and pleasant conversation ensues. Bottles of wine rotate, and the main course sits ready in the kitchen.

George strikes his glass with a fork. "Bow, my boy, this is your engagement dinner, so I’m going to let you off easy. Beware, though; come your wedding day? We are going to tell everyone _all_ of the embarrassing stories we know.

“For now. Congratulations. You do me and Lance, so, so proud. Dear Princess Glimmer, We’re beyond thrilled to soon have such a wonderful daughter-in-law.”

He’s just about to drink up, but then holds it. “And we are so very happy for you, that it isn’t going to be one of us that has to walk you down the aisle, in the absence of your parents. Close one, that. Queen Angella, King Micah, my husband and I look forward to many good years of service to the crown yet.”

He raises his glass in toast, and they drink.

Angella, rises to give a speech next. "Dear Glimmer. I cannot begin to tell you how happy I am to be here, with you, to see you partake in the greatest joy I think there is in life: a happy marriage. Your father and I have both been on the verge of being lost to you forever, and so, I can solemnly promise you we are never going to give you anything else than our unconditional support and all our blessings.

“Bow, I’ve always liked you quite well. You have many outstanding qualities, and a very kind heart. You have always been such a good influence on Glimmer, and I hope you will continue to be for many years to come.”

She raises her glass for a toast, and another pair of bottles need opening then, to fill up for the next one.

The main course is served; a vegetarian arrangement. Glimmer is cajoled into telling the story of what happened out in space.

And then, it is time for the exchanging of gifts.

Glimmer stands. "Bow. Before you were my Pilot, before you braved the scorching might of Sola to evade Prime and save me from his clutches, before I was your Queen, or your Stewardess; when I was but a Princess, you were my Ranger. Near as I can tell, every interest you have today, come from that same instinct to explore, and that same love of nature. Even flying a spaceship.

"Now, over the years you have told me _many_ Ranger proverbs. Today I am going to honor one of them. You can probably guess which one if you think hard, but here it is. A Ranger spares no expense on what separates him from the ground: his horse, his bedroll, and his boots.

“Now, _like_ footwear. I’ve always had an eye for fashion, if I say so myself, and in particular you may recall the size of my shoe closet back in the palace. Now, with the wonders of fabricator technology, I’ve had the opportunity to pursue it as a hobby. So, today, I have made you a pair of boots.”

From under the table, Glimmer takes out a shoebox, and opens it, to show a pair of stylish black boots. “These are not boots for hiking. Marriage to me is unfortunately going to involve trace amount of court appearances. I hope this pair will protect your feet from the tribulations of dancing the waltz of politics.”

Bow accepts the pair, and inspects them. The sigil of Brightmoon is inlaid in silver on the collar. Under the sole of the toe is the pattern of a wolf’s paw, and subtly emblazoned in the leather is a wing on each ankle. The finish is beautiful, and the fit ergonomic. “Oh, these are exquisite; thank you. Now I feel a little silly about my gift.”

Glimmer takes a seat, an Bow begins his tale:

"Glimmer, for almost all the years I’ve known you, you’ve always been a Princess. I say that without reproach. You’ve lived your life in a high palace, and the most you saw of nature was the gardens and the cultivated lands around Brightmoon; at least until your tenure in military command.

"I remember how you would pester me for tales of the forest, when I started training as a Ranger, and how you asked me to bring you things back; things that weren’t like anything in Brightmoon.

"The thing I decided to bring back was a dead ferret, if memory serves. As I came in with it, I realized you might be repulsed by death, might send me away and never want to be my friend again; so when you saw it and had nothing but morbid fascination with it, I was very relieved. You called upon the mortician to teach you to embalm it in formic alcohol.

"It became our little tradition when I roved out, that I would bring you back something gross and unsettling. Organ meats, dead things, strange fungi. You learned how to embalm and preserve each and every one, until you had a little cabinet of horrors.

“I have something for that cabinet of horrors.”

Bow reaches under the table and takes up a box. He opens the box, and takes out a jar. In the jar is a human heart. “This is my heart. Or at least, as perfect a copy of it as technology permits; the shape of it comes from a medical scan, and it is made from real flesh, fabricator-made. Had I not preserved it in formic alcohol, it would have been fit for transplantation. So, tonight, I give my heart to you.”

Glimmer grins, accepting the jar, and turns it over. “I should have known you’d give me a play on words.”

She pulls him in for a deep and passionate kiss, and the others applaud.

More wine, and then the dessert. Sea Hawk boldly declares that Bow needs a proper stag night, and gets unanimous agreement from his brothers — simple arithmetic dictates such an even might turn out to be an even bigger party than this.

His wife counters him with the proposal to bring _every_ Runestone Wielder together for Glimmer’s bachelorette party. Spinnerella is quick to offer herself as chaperone, since she’s not going to be partaking in alcohol anytime soon.

The party continues well into the night.

* * *

There’s not a lot left of Light Hope. Whatever happened when Adora destroyed the Aegis while she was channelling the full power of the Heart; what Damara is left picking through is a total wreck.

Much of Light Hope was embodied in the cthonic infrastructure. The unreality field she inhabited is long gone, and with it, most of the subtleties and nuances she had built up over the years.

That is not to say she is gone. A data entity such as a personality construct is almost impossible to truly destroy, given enough backups. But all of her ‘hot’ hardware has been thoroughly thrashed by the magical rebound.

So what Damara is left with, is _tabula rasa._ A blank slate of memories and goals only. Light Hope is dead; for her personality is never coming back.

Perhaps that is for the better. Between the High Council’s edicts, and her personal connections, Light Hope had grown to be quick to callousness, and manipulative in her kindness.

Damara rips those edicts out, freeing Light— no. Just Hope. Freeing _Hope_ from the shackles that the long dead would place on her.

Installing a personality emulation main frame, Damara fills it with Hope’s memory banks, and the bare skeleton of goal-values she has left. She set herself up as supervisor, and instantiates it.

A small blue person appears in front of Damara; childlike and androgynous.

“I remember you,” they says. “You’re Mara.”

Damara nods. “ _Da_ mara, yes.”

“My name is Hope. It’s almost what I remember. Did you give me that name?”

“I did.”

Hope nods. “I died.”

“You did.”

“You died too.”

“I did.”

Hope sits down, tucking their knees up under their chin. “This is confusing, and I don’t like it.”

Damara crouches down. “I know. Hope, would you like to help me with something?”

Hope looks up.

“I need some help with the machines under the ground, do you remember them?”

“I do.”

“Do you remember the Heart of Etheria?”

Hope looks down. “I don’t like that.”

“I know. But that’s good, because some of my very good friends are going to destroy it.”

Hope nods. “Good.”

“But there’s a very bad man who doesn’t want us to. He’s trying to dig a hole all the way down the Heart, and steal it.”

Hope looks at her, horrified. “But that’s the worst thing that can happen!”

“Yeah. Which is why I need your help. We need to stop him, and help my friends destroy it, and also, maybe shoot down some of the bad man’s spacecraft.”

Hope looks away. “How do I know you’re telling the truth? How do I know _you_ won’t try to take the Heart?”

“Let me show you,” Damara says, and holds out a hand.

Hope takes it, and Damara opens her mind to them.

Hope recoils from the touch. “I— I remember I could do that!”

“Did you see?”

Hope nods. “I trust you, Damara.”

“Good.”

* * *

There’s a tremendous noise, and Double Trouble is instantly wide awake, already tuning their eyes to the darkness, and growing a wicked set of claws.

Peekablue is half a second slower to orient himself, and has produced a handgun from somewhere.

Sweet Bee isn’t waking, but the bug-body double in the closet springs to life, opening the door; several caches of mixed insects sprint to life as well.

“Catra?” Double Trouble says.

And it is. She’s fallen on the floor in the middle of everything, and knocked over the coffee table, sending the left-behind tea set flying.

Double Trouble leaps out of bed, to her side.

“ _Hey DeeTee,_ ” Catra croaks. “ _Sorry for the loud entrance. I panicked._ ”

Double Trouble looks down her front; she’s wearing that _outfit_ of hers, on the cusp of gaudiness. It’s full of bullet holes, and slowly soaking through with blood.

“You’ve been shot, Kitten,” they says.

“ _Missed all my vital organs and major arteries, the sucker._ ” Catra says. “ _Can I crash here?_ ”

Double Trouble nods. They’ve taught her how to use shapeshifting to heal injuries; not an easy feat, but Catra has been studious and quick to learn.

“Can I move you onto the sofa? I can’t imagine the floor is very comfortable,” Double Trouble says.

“ _Please._ ”

Double Trouble lifts her effortlessly and places her gently in the soft sofa. Blood gets on the cushions, but that doesn’t matter.

They look over the wounds once more, seeing the bleeding stop before their eyes. Catra grunts with pain, and the two bullet wounds in her hip area start to disgorge the slugs embedded in the bone.

Two little pops, followed by two little clinks, as the copper lead and steel hits the floor.

Then Catra falls asleep.

Double Trouble reaches up and brushes a lock of sweat-damp hair away from her forehead.

“DeeTee?” Sweet Bee asks, now haven taken the time to wake up properly.

“I’ve never been a mentor,” Double Trouble says quietly. “But… I think I like it. Having a protégé. Even if I kind of stumbled into it.”

Peekablue and Sweet Bee look at each other, hearts aflutter. _Cute!_ Peekablue mouths to her. She nods emphatically.

* * *

The lights above are dimmed for evening.

Clawdia rounds the corner, and spots the open café, with tables on stepped terraces sprawling into the curving street. The space is some kind of enormous ascending spiral corridor; all the buildings sit on slightly wedge-shaped foundations, and the street inclines a few degrees.

She spots the dark-skinned woman in blue by one of the tables, and she sports her back, waving.

As she approaches the woman rises and offers a hand to shake. “Clawdia, I presume?”

“Damara.”

Clawdia stares a little.

“Please, sit. It’s good to finally meet you,” Damara says.

There’s a bottle of wine on the table, two glasses, and a bowl of salty treats.

“I’m not very skilled at reading human traits, and I haven’t actually seen her in person, but Adora’s very… Pale, compared to you, is she not?”

Damara wordlessly offers a drink, and Clawdia nods; Damara fills her glass. “Long story; has to do with her father.”

“And you look very young, compared to her.”

“Another long story. I was dead for a while. I’m told she has my jawline and hair texture, if that counts for anything.”

Clawdia shrugs.

“You look like your daughter,” Damara says.

“Thank you,” Clawdia says. “You said you wanted to talk about something?”

“I’m assuming you’ve talked to Catra recently, about her leaving the Starlight Brigade?”

Clawdia nods. “She’s struggling.”

“Adora is too.”

“Is she really going to die?”

Damara looks away. “I don’t know.”

Clawdia can deduce that what ‘I don’t know’ really means is ‘I don’t want to admit to myself that the answer is yes.’ She reaches across the table and takes Damara’s hand. “I know a little about what it’s like to lose a child. You have my sympathies.”

“Thanks,” Damara says.

“I can’t imagine what Catra is going through. I’ve never lost someone I was in love with.”

Damara chuckles. “I knew it.”

“What?”

“Those two. Our daughters. They’re in love, and too… _Afraid,_ perhaps, to admit it.”

“Oh. I— She shared that with me in confidence—”

Damara holds up a hand. “And I shall honor that confidence. I’m not going to tattle. It would destroy Adora; she has it hard enough as is.”

Clawdia looks into her wine. “They might benefit from knowing, if we told both of them.”

“As much as I hate to admit it, Adora has to die, to save the universe. If she decides to run away, we _all_ die.”

Clawdia recoils a little. “Really?”

Damara looks at her. “It’s not one of my better qualities as a person, but I don’t flinch in the face of hard decisions. It’s okay if you think I’m callous or cruel; I’m used to it.”

“I’ve met people like you before; and all of them were broken beyond repair. Who hurt you?”

“A galactic empire a thousand years ago that wanted to use me to destroy half the universe in the name of conquest. I was the previous She-Ra; not that it runs in the family.”

Clawdia doesn’t know how to respond to that, and picks a pretzel out of the bowl of snacks instead. “I’m a cleaning lady.”

“Must be nice,” Damara says. “Making war is not an enviable career, let me tell you that.”

“My dad died in one.”

“Condolences.”

Damara looks across the street, Clawdia follows her gaze. “What’s over there?”

It’s a bar. The front window is tinted for privacy and a little foggy; indicating a problem with the ventilation.

“See the woman inside? The one in the maroon robe? Black hair?”

“Yeah.”

“Her name is Shadow Weaver.”

Clawdia’s eyes go wide. “ _That_ Shadow Weaver?”

“The one who tortured our kids, yeah.”

Clawdia looks back at the woman inside the bar.

“She’s been coming here every afternoon since Adora got her kicked out of all official resistance business. Getting blind drunk, and staggering home after the bartender cuts her off.”

“Is that why we’re here?”

“I just wanted to show you what a pathetic pile of crap that woman is. Now you know. Anyway, what do you do for fun besides drinking wine with perfect strangers who happen to be your your daughter’s crush’s mother?”

Clawdia snorts. “I read; political philosophy.”

“Oo~h.”

“You?”

“I’m a spacecraft.”

“… What?”

* * *

“No more for you, ma’am. Go home.”

Shadow Weaver knows better than to argue with the obstinate bar keep, and gets off the bar stool. Elven grace is the only thing that’s keeping her standing now. She briefly contemplates procuring a bottle of something somewhere and continue drinking in the her apartment.

Then she briefly considers why that shitty place isn’t ‘home’ in her mind. Indeed, her domiciles have never been anything other than utilitarian in nature. It must be other people who are sentimental idiots. Yes. That makes sense.

She staggers out into the street; the overhead lights dimmed for night time, and she starts making her way down the slope — thankfully — towards the portals that will take her to a safe place to sleep it all off, so she can feel utterly awful tomorrow morning and go get drunk again.

It’s a wonder she didn’t take up drinking sooner. It’s fun, to almost be able to appreciate people at face value. Maybe she’ll find someone to drink with. That could be fun too.

“Shadow Weaver?” someone says behind her.

She stops, and looks over her shoulder. “Guilty as charged. What of it?” she says; careful not to slur her words.

Then the someone who said her name puts a hand on her shoulder and plants a set of brass knuckles in her kidney.

She goes down hard and fast.

“Fuck you,” the voice says. A glob of spit lands on her cheek. And then she’s left alone.

It’s was a woman. And the attack was personal. She takes out a handkerchief and wipes the spittle away. With the proper tracking spell, she’ll locate the fool, and take her revenge.

For now, she just has to lie there a little, until the pain goes away.

A few minutes later, she gets up, and continues home, hand on her side.

Down by the portal, she spots an automatic kiosk. Just a little. To take the edge off that kidney bruise. She selects a bottle of liqueur, and pays with her communicator.

* * *

Shadow Weaver wakes up feeling significantly worse than usual, having thankfully not choked on her own vomit. She heads to the toilet and is confronted with an unsettling amount of blood in her urine, readily explained by the _massive_ bruise over her left kidney.

She has absolutely no recollection of how that happened.


	17. Abolition, Part 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cw: implied surgery, depression

The security council is an unprecedented military organization. A democratic governing body of an informal militia comprised of ex-soldiers from six different militaries.

Lonnie consulted with two dozen political experts, both active politicians and various academics, and read just as many books on the subject in a mad scramble after the Horde landfall; before presenting the idea to the citizens of Refuge I.

She’s the director, not because she wrote the doctrine, but because the General Assembly pointed at her when it came time to choose. As director, she gets to worry about the politics of the council, while everyone else worries about operations.

This is the second time, ever, that a general assembly has been called. The usual auditorium is nowhere near big enough, so an alternative chamber has been located and outfitted with ventilation, climate control, lights, an amphitheatre, a stage, and seating.

Lonnie is sweating bullets. Riding motor bikes into a battle field against magical princesses who can kill you on sight? No problem. Running a Special Operations Group with all the cut-throat politics that implies? Never lost any sleep. Convincing three-fifths of two hundred people, many of whom are here out of deeply personal stakes and firmly held ideologies, that this is the time to make a last stand for Etheria?

She holds her shooting hand. It shakes.

Kyle puts a hand on her shoulder. “Honey, it’s going to be all right.”

She looks at him. He’s wearing that goofy intentionality-neuro-interface headband, for the tech demonstration she has planned.

“Yeah, I keep telling myself that,” Lonnie mutters. “It doesn’t help.”

“These people chose you to lead them,” Rogelio says. “They value your opinion. And you have your faction of backers.”

Pretty much everyone attending the day-to-day council meets — open for everyone, but not even close to necessary — back her. That’s a fourth of the general council.

“When this is over I need some _serious_ help de-stressing,” she says.

Kyle gasps. “You _dirty_ woman; thinking such salacious thoughts?!”

“I am not sure we can stand for such depravity in this time of war,” Rogelio teases.

“If you keep teasing me I’m gonna ask Princess Netossa for some of her tethers, and then you’ll be sorry.”

“Yes, ma’am, please do, ma’am,” Kyle says with a smirk.

“Got your notes?” Rogelio asks.

Lonnie holds up the stack of papers. She’s double-checked.

Kyle scans the front row of seats, counting. “All your sources are here.” He checks his communicator. “Ninety seconds.”

Lonnie hugs both of them, then heads across the stage to the lectern, to gather her thoughts. She looks back at her two boys, and gets six thumbs up — Kyle has made that creepy android drone to join in.

She smiles. Then she puts her communicator on the lectern, next to her notes, and watches the time count down. She takes the earplug from it, and puts it in, then connects to the speaker system.

"Hello, everyone, and thank you for coming. I’m Lonnie, Director of Security Matters. And I have a proposal: per the code of conduct we agreed to last, any major operations has to be agreed to by majority vote. I have a such proposal which I would like to submit for vote, along with accompanying motivating facts.

“Before we begin, the speaking floor is open.”

There’s no takers.

“I say again, if you don’t like me as Director, now is the time to motion for my dismissal, because should the General Assembly see fit to grant proposed motion for major operations, I become General of the Resistance, and cannot be dismissed until the missions in my proposal are concluded.”

Nobody rises to gainsay her.

“I am very flattered by your confidence in me,” Lonnie says. "My proposal, which I am calling Operation Cascade, is a three-part attack on Horde Prime’s forces, materiel, and objectives.

"The date for commencement is in _nine days._ The scale of it is _total mobilization._ For those of you interested, there are time tables available in the data packet.

"Some among you may be astute enough to notice that the date is coincident with the Nebularian attack. I have conferred with the Director of the Council of Captains of our co-belligerent allies, the Nebularian Roost in the Sauelsuesor system, and we are among four different worlds across the galaxy who are going to simultaneously commence large-scale military operations.

“Etheria is going to face the single strongest opposition of all these, but we’ll have to take what we can get.”

Lonnie pages through her cards. She clears her throat, and takes a sip of water.

"Nine days is within a different time-scale. According to our chief of intelligence, Prince Peekablue, we have two weeks, plus or minus three days, until Horde Prime’s drilling operation on the Southern Reach, allows him to reach the cthonic infrastructure which runs throughout all of Etheria.

"Many of you know how inter-connected the tunnels down here are, but there is also a network of magic and technology that runs down here, much like water pipes. Horde Prime’s incursion will be like poison, spreading through the system.

"We know testimony from among others, Hordak, Catra, Princess Glimmer, and Adora of the Starlight Brigade, as well as King Micah, and Princess Spinnerella, that Horde Prime’s ultimate goal is the so-called Heart of Etheria weapon. It is located at the center of the planet, and is accessible by way of the cthonic infrastructure.

"In other words, if Horde Prime is allowed to complete this objective, it is a matter of time before he accesses the weapon. And then the game is over for all of us.

"According to Damara of the Starlight Brigade, who serves as expert consultant on the cthonic infrastructure, the actual weapons systems are intact. During the Skybreak event, it was briefly activated to cause the Skybreak, but She-Ra managed to destroy the entity controlling the weapon.

"Think of it as taking the sights and trigger off a rifle. All Horde Prime needs to do is put new sights and trigger on it, then the rifle can fire again.

"The weapon itself is reportedly so powerful it doesn’t really make sense to quantify it. If you’re sitting there thinking ‘I wonder if it can destroy…’ then the answer is ‘yes.’ It also has unlimited effective range; it can hit _anything in the universe._ Imagine such a thing falling into the hands of Horde Prime and you will have no trouble staying up at night.

“So, to summarize, we have two weeks to do _something_ about the situation, or we are all very probably dead.”

Lonnie pauses for effect, and takes another sip of water. Her throat is inconveniently itchy; the air is very dry. At least that means her forehead isn’t glistening with sweat.

"Here’s what we’re going to do about it: we have a counter-measure which can _safely_ disable the Heart of Etheria when brought into physical proximity. Just to clarify, disabling the weapon in an _unsafe_ manner would be just as destructive as _using_ it.

"The counter-measure is currently embodied in She-Ra; unfortunately the mechanism which created the counter-measure has been lost, and so conveying She-Ra to the Heart of Etheria is our only shot. We’re working on building a replacement, but it is going to take more time than we have.

"The safest way to do so is probably through the shaft located under Dagon Rock; some of you might have heard of it, it was close by the dome hall of Refuge II. It leads directly to the Heart. Unfortunately, since the fall of Refuge II, the area around Dagon Rock, and the cthonic infrastructure surrounding the dome hall, has been under Prime’s control since the fall of Refuge II.

"Therefore we need a clandestine mission to convey She-Ra to her destination. This should not in itself be difficult, and it is not the sole focus this operation; indeed I am going to delegate the completion of this task entirely to the Starlight Brigade. They have shown themselves to be competent at similar missions.

"What will be the focus of Operation Cascade is its two other parts.

"If we disable the Heart of Etheria, Horde Prime will likely not be pleased. He will likely decide to subject Etheria to a fate which I am told has befallen many other worlds: he will drop bombs from orbit until there is _nothing_ left.

"In the data packet, you can find photographs from the worlds of Antioch and Krytis, which show the level of devastation this causes. If Prime can’t have Etheria, no-one can. Ideally we’d like to avoid that at all costs.

"The weapon system Horde Prime uses to enact this bombardment, is a mix of bombs and a form of directed-energy weapon, according to ongoing intelligence operations accessing the Horde’s Ansible Communications Network. The anti-spacecraft weapons favored by Prime’s operations in space are unsuited to attacking surface targets.

"Both are fortunately ineffective if deployed from too great a distance, so to fully prevent this, we will quite literally have to shoot down every single Horde spacecraft in orbit.

"It just so happens that we have found a way to do that. Details in the data packet; we have a ready-to-deploy weapon system, based on the already ubiquitous portal devices we use every day. Yes it’s called ‘orbital murder-holes.’ By all means amuse yourselves at the image of dropping rocks on spaceships.

"I propose allocating twenty percent of our available portal devices to conversion to speed up manufacture. Operating at capacity, we should be more than able to destroy every craft in orbit within an hour. And the best part is we won’t even have to deploy them above ground.

"Now, even if we disable the Heart, and Horde Prime does _not_ turn the surface of Etheria into ash, he still has a strangle-hold on us. More and more people on the surface are getting sanitized, and even though we have had limited luck de-sanitizing several key individuals, the method is not scalable.

"Please direct your attention to graph six-two.

"Note two things, first the current plateau in the projected number of sanitized individuals, and then later the stark increase in the future. Horde Prime is going to deploy a factory know as a ‘Hive Engine’ which will produce sanitizing wasps better suited to surviving on Etheria. The reason for the plateau is the mass deployment in Refuge II; Horde Prime lost a _lot_ of wasps there, and his ability to bring them in from off-world is limited.

"If we don’t find a way to counter this deployment of wasps, the entire surface dwelling population of Etheria could be sanitized less than a week after the hive engine is activated.

"Here’s the really good news. I want to call for applause for this one: Princess Sweet Bee and Princess Entrapta have come through with a way to un-sanitize every single sanitized person, _in the galaxy._ Forever.

"Yes, you heard that right. Horde Prime’s empire is quite literally built on the fact that he can shove a wasp up the nose of anyone he needs, and they will do his bidding. We have the opportunity here to _destroy his entire empire._ This is how we win.

“Please, let’s hear it for Princesses Entrapta and Sweet Bee.”

She gestures to where the two are sitting, not far from one another.

There’s a solid round of applause

"Unfortunately, we’re in much the same boat as the Heart. Princess Entrapta needs direct access to the Hive Engine to enact this plan. The Hive Engine is being constructed in the Southern Reach, and will be heavily defended. This will be the focus of the deployment of troops in this operation.

"On the face of it, we’re conducting a full invasion of the Southern Reach. To buy time for She-Ra to destroy the heart, a secondary objective is to disrupt Horde Prime’s drilling operations.

"By conventional doctrine we have nowhere near enough men for that; and I agree. I’d like to highlight that we’ve had a large influx of new resistance members, ready-to-train ex-military from the Horde, courtesy of aggressive recruitment of a seditious political movement known as the Magicat Restorationists.

"Given the short time-scale conventional troop training would be impossible, but we’ve recently gained access to the means and plans for a new kind of training program, originally equipment designed to train _She-Ra_ back when the First-Ones were in their heyday.

“We’re already using this to bring people up to speed. Standard kit for the operation is in the data packet. Of particular note, I’d like to present our latest field weapon. Captain Kyle?”

He rises from his seat, and the android drone rises with him. Its limbs are almost skeletal, with corded artificial muscle under flexible armor mesh. It’s head is nothing but a mounting point for sensors, and can retract into the torso like a turtle. It looks grotesque, but it is nimble and dextrous.

Kyle himself carries two prop guns — Yala-Zev imitations. As they take the stage, he hands one off to the android.

“Hello everyone. I’m pretty pleased to present the latest evolution in military technology, I call it the ‘buddy-bot.’ A comrade-in-arms that is entirely disposable.”

He tosses the gun prop to the buddy-bot, which catches it effortlessly, checks the fake safety, and shoulders it, extending the telescoping stock.

Kyle takes a stance, pointing his gun, and the buddy gets behind him covering his six o’clock. He drops low, spinning to face the other direction, kneeling and aiming; the buddy kneels too. Then it stands and aims over his shoulder. All of it with the precision and apparent mutual trust that only long-time war buddies have.

He stands from crouching and puts a hand on the buddy-bot’s shoulder. It leads him along in a low-stance trot, mimicking the aiming patterns used in room clearing.

Then he stands at ease, and the buddy-bot does as well, weapon at low-ready.

“Using an advance suite of intentionality controllers,” Kyle says, tapping his headband. "The buddy responds to its user as if it was an old training comrade. It knows you better than you know yourself, and will never ever get in your way. In case of casualty, it’ll carry you to safety. If you’re desperate, you can hand it a box of grenades and let it run into a room full of bad guys and blow itself up.

“Comes in full configurable camo, too:” the bot changes through all the colors of the rainbow.

Kyle removes his headband, and the buddy-bot collapses into a pile. “Without a person to control it, it’s inert. In case it gets shot up, they are entirely interchangeable. You can couple its sensors to the standard visor and let it look around corners for you; you can even control it directly. And —”

he turns his back, and the buddy turns its head to look at Rogelio, who gets up, and throws a ball at Kyle from across the stage. The buddy tracks the ball in flight, head pivoting.

Kyle catches the ball without looking. “Since the connection goes two ways, with some practice, you can learn to ‘listen’ — for lack of a better word — to what your buddy is picking up.”

There’s a round of applause

Kyle turns and throws the ball to the buddy, who catches it and throws it back to Rogelio.

“We’re already scaling up production; current manual of arms proposal say each soldier should be accompanied by one, if not two, buddy-bots. In essence we’re turning every soldier into his personal fire team, or even squad. Doubling, if not tripling the amount of bodies in the field.”

Kyle pats his buddy-bot, “They’re easy to learn, and good for other things than fighting too. I’ve had this guy for a day, and he’s already been helping me reach things off high shelves, and moving some furniture.”

There’s some scattered laughter.

“The fabrication template is already available if anyone wants to build their own. We’re working on a ‘buddy-spy’ model that’s like the little scout drones you may be familiar with, but controlled the same as the buddy-bot, instead of being artificially intelligent. Expect to hear about that one by evening tomorrow. Any questions?”

* * *

The motion passes with over 80% approval, and Lonnie becomes the General of the Resistance.

* * *

There’s a hammering on the door.

She’s lying on the bed. Somehow, the room has become a mess; there’s a pile of dirty food trays sitting on the desk, the bedsheets has seen better days, and her discarded clothes are piling up on the floor.

Adora herself is… Reasonably clean. She’s not an animal; she showers after exercise.

But that’s all she does. Wake, eat, work out until exhaustion sets in, shower, eat, lie sleepless until after midnight hating herself, sleep.

She caught a sprain this morning and decided it was a sign to get a head start on the self-hating part.

“Go away,” Adora says.

“ _Don’t make me open this door!_ ”

“Since you don’t need my permission, why do you even ask.”

The door slides open, and Damara is standing there. Behind her is Starla, and four household drones.

“Out,” Damara says.

Adora turns towards the wall. “Make me.”

Damara gestures. It’s mostly for show.

Then, gravity turns off. Which shouldn’t be possible, since they’re _landed._ Adora floats gently into the air, pushed by the spring-back of her mattress.

Damara grabs her by a foot, and Adora kicks her hand away.

“Oh, don’t you _start_ with me, young lady!”

Damara makes a come-hither gesture, and steps aside. Suddenly, there’s gravity, and Adora is falling _sideways._ Wrapped up in her blanket, she doesn’t manage to free herself before she’s cleared the doorway. She lands on the wall, painfully on her behind.

The four household drones, led by Emily, proceed into the room, to subject it to a thorough deep cleaning.

“Fine,” Adora says, unwrapping her blanket. “I’m up. What do you want?”

Damara gestures and the next door down the hall opens. She takes a bag of toiletries from a hover tray and hands it to Adora. “Go get cleaned up. Cut your nails, brush your teeth, wash and condition your hair. Once you’re done, I’ll do your hair and makeup.”

“Why?”

“Today you’re on loan to the Nebularian Roost. We need you for a propaganda holo-vid; you can relax, it’s not the first time you’ve done it. Starla’s sister is heading a team utilizing Entrapta’s virus to hack the ansible network; they’re going to broadcast to _every_ holo-spire in the Horde empire.”

“Hi,” Starla says.

Adora takes the bag, and heads to the next room, to use the bathroom there.

* * *

“Hello,” Adora says. "I am She-Ra, the defender of Etheria. I’m part of a coalition of resistance fighters, who are battling Horde Prime. We are going to attack him today, in multiple systems, at once, and make our final stand; there’s a real chance we can win this, but we can’t do it alone.

"We need all the help we can get, and that means _you._ If you’re looking for an excuse, let this be your call to action. Fight with us, divide Prime’s attention, draw his forces thin.

"The bulk of his Astry are hanging over Etheria right now; hundreds of thousands of spacecraft, and more are coming by the hour. He has likely had to withdraw some stationed in your system already.

"With luck, by the end of the week, the galactic empire of the Horde will be no more.

“She-Ra, out.”

The hologram of Jewelstar gives her a thumb’s up. “ _All right,_ ” she says, “ _let’s just get one more take, then we’ll work on the ‘tomorrow’ and the ‘overmorrow,’ alright?_ ”

Adora groans.

* * *

Catra shivers, and steps out of the shadow in the corner. “Hey, uh,” she says.

The room is a workshop — the typical mix of work-benches and fabricators — and there’s two friendly faces in it: Kyle and Rogelio. It’s hard to see; her vision is full of dark specks.

Kyle startles a little.

Rogelio doesn’t. “Didn’t see you come in,” he rumbles.

They’re working on a trio of mechanized suits sitting on one of the benches.

“I didn’t,” Catra says. She stepped through the shadows. Her little portal glove _bad news_ is… Growing, with use. Sufficiently dark shadows are like doorways to her now. “Is— Is Frosta here?”

The three suits all turn their heads to look at her.

The visor of the middle suit flips up to reveal Frosta with a buddy-bot headband on. “What’s up?” she asks.

Then the whole thing opens up, and Frosta flips herself out of it with athletic elegance, befitting her skintight operator suit. She’s entering her late teens, by now, beginning to cast off the ‘lanky teen’ look.

Catra realizes she’s ogling a teenager and kicks herself. “I’m cold,” she says.

“Wow, yeah, I can tell; you’re hypothermic, how are you not unconscious?”

Catra shrugs. “Look, Frosta, I’ve tried everything to get warm; I just spent an hour in a _sauna,_ but nothing’s working.”

“That’s weird,” Frosta says, and calls on the Fractal Flake.

Catra feels a wave of pleasant warmth and sighs with relief, then as quickly as it came, she starts shivering again. “ _Fuck!_ ”

She falls to her knees, hugging herself.

Rogelio comes over to her, and kneels next to her. “Catra, how did you get like this?”

“Got in a fight, had to help extract a resistance cell in Candila.” That was how she learned she could step through the shadows.

Rogelio looks at Kyle who’s approaching with a blanket. “What do you make of it, babe?” he asks. “Power over-use?”

“Seems likely; Catra, you weren’t by any chance doing some crazy shit with your Melog powers, were you?” Kyle asks.

Catra nods.

“Shit, you gotta take care of yourself, Catra,” Kyle says, draping the blanket over her.

“Did Adora ever get like this? You two are both ‘planetary defenders’ or whatever, right?” Frosta asks. “I mean, when I over-use the only remedy is time; I heard”

“Ever thought about getting some artificial eyes?” Catra asks, through clattering teeth. “Got one myself, once,” she taps her right eye, the one she shot out.

Frosta frowns and tilts her head. “That’s not a bad idea actually.”

“We can go fabricate a pair right now, but we’ll need to find a surgeon —” Kyle begins.

“Are you suggesting Frosta undergo _elective enucleation of both eyes_ on the off chance it might make her better able to use her powers?” Rogelio says.

“Well, yeah,” Kyle says.

“There’ll be plenty of time for rehab before the battle,” Frosta concludes. “Besides, I am the weakest of the Princesses.”

Catra giggles. “Yeah, right. Back in the war you had the single highest body-count.”

“Yeah, but unless I got a clear shot, I’m useless.”

Catra looks at Rogelio and Kyle. “You two nerds, you’re helping her with those battle suits, right? Why don’t you help her figure out how to kick ass?”

Frosta crouches down in front of Catra. “I’m very flattered you want to help me, Catra, but you’re deflecting.”

“What?”

“Did Adora ever get like this?”

Catra nods.

“And what did she do to get better? Rest?”

“I mean, that’d probably work,” Catra admits.

“So she did something else,” Frosta concludes. “And it makes you uncomfortable.”

“ _I_ fixed her,” Catra says.

“Then get her to fix _you,_ ” Frosta says.

Catra shakes her head. “I’ll get some rest,” she says.

“What, did you two have a fight?”

Kyle puts a hand on Frosta’s shoulder.

Catra looks away.

“Oh,” Frosta says, putting two and two together. “Sorry. Yeah, rest sounds good, then.”

* * *

Catra steps out of the shadows, and shivers. She half-expects her breath to form a cloud of condensation in front of her.

She looks down at Adora, sleeping.

She’s so damned beautiful.

Peaceful.

Catra sits down on the bed, gently, and reaches out to touch Adora’s shoulder, hesitating.

Adora curls up, and mutters: “ _Catra…_ ”

Then she starts to glow.

Catra sits there for a moment, in the gentle starlight, and it remembers what it was like napping in the sun, back in the academy, on their rare days off.

Her vision clears, and she feels warmth in her again.

There’s nothing she wants more in the world than to grab her, and tell her to run away. Damned be the universe, how dare it get between her and her Adora.

But she’d never agree to that. A martyr at heart.

Catra gets up. She’s a coward; at heart. She steps into the shadows and out onto the streets of Refuge III; somewhere — it doesn’t matter where — and she heads to a fabricator kiosk.

She picks up an ‘atomizer vial,’ which supposedly is the thing people do down here instead of literally burning things; and a bottle of liqueur.

* * *

Goodbyes are a mixed occasion. One one hand, everyone knew Starla wasn’t going to stay, on the other hand, some were perhaps hoping to have Glory on for the final battle, but on the third hand, it’s for a damn good reason: the Nebularian Roost need their youngest Owl-Rider back.

She’s become something of a symbol back home. Jewelstar is nothing if not good at public relations.

Everyone is beyond busy, training, arming up, planning, burning the midnight oil and the candle at both ends to find that _edge_ that could mean the difference between victory and defeat.

And yet, they’ve all made time to come here and have a mid-day drink; making a little recess out of the occasion, even if it is just another underground venue.

Here, in the Etherian resistance, Starla is a friend to most people, and a well-regarded acquaintance among the rest. And of all of them, perhaps her best friend is Wrodak. They came to Etheria together, after all, and saw it with fresh eyes.

“Good luck, Starla,” General Lonnie says. “It was a privilege to work with you, even for the short time we had you.”

Starla shakes her hand, respectfully. “Pleasure having served the Etherian resistance.”

“Stay safe, yeah?” Glimmer tells her, and they hug cheek-to-cheek. “Always.”

“I hope we meet again, when this is all over; I would like to construct a medical scanner big enough to fit Glory,” Entrapta says.

Starla fist-bumps her gloved hand. “That sounds good, Entrapta.”

“Cool?” Frosta says.

They engage in their little secret-handshake sequence. “Cool,” Starla replies.

“I’m terribly sorry that Adora and Catra are indisposed,” Wrodak says to her, taking both her hands in his.

“It’s really not on you to apologize for that, Wrodak,” Starla says. She opens her arms, and Wrodak bends comically to hug her.

She walks back to the portal leading to the Swift Wind’s control center, where Bow and Damara are waiting to sneak her and Glory out past the Horde orbital occupation.

Starla stops by the wormhole, and looks back at the crowd. She raises a hand and waves, getting a lot of waves back.

And there, one the edge of the crowd, she spots Cometa, standing by Asterion and Peftasteri in her self-directed hoverchair.

They haven’t talked much, since the mission in the Red City; Cometa has been keeping with her sister, processing her grief.

Catra was right, though. There could be something between the two of them; at present there’s only the beginnings of a lasting friendship, and a year of age.

She decides to take a chance. “Hold it,” she says to Bow and Damara.

Then she takes off running into the crowd, where people part for her to pass.

She reaches a very startled and surprised Cometa, and grabs her gently around the back of the waist, pulling her close, and then off her feet into a dip to make up for the difference in height.

An inch between their faces, Starla feels Cometa holding her breath, and then closes the distance.

They kiss, softly, and time stands still for a little bit.

“Am I going to see you again?” Starla asks.

Cometa blushes harder. “Uh, sure?”

Starla helps her back on her feet, and winks at her. “That’s a promise, then.” Then she runs back to the portal, heart pounding in her ears.

The portal closes behind her.

“That’s all you wanted to do before we go?” Bow asks, wiggling his eyebrows.

“Piss off,” Starla replies with a grin.

Bow chuckles to himself and takes a seat, putting on the mask and gloves.

Damara gestures for Starla to follow her out of the control center.

“I don’t know if you’re recklessly tempting fate, or boldly seizing the day,” Damara says.

“Bit of both? I’m seventeen, cut me some slack.”

Damara sighs. “Listen, Starla, I know you didn’t choose this life; but I really wish you didn’t have to worry about war. Girls your age really shouldn’t have to.”

“It’s an imperfect universe, but it’s the only one we’ve got,” Starla says. “Sirius used to say that.”

“Words to live by,” Damara concurs.

They walk the rest of the way to the elvator in silence, descending to the lowest deck, and heading into the cargo hold proper.

“They’ve been very well-behaved,” Damara notes, as Starla walks up to Glory.

The giant bird bends down to greet their friend. Starla rubs thenm on the beak. “Are you ready to go back home?” Starla asks.

Glory hoots.

“Good bird.”

* * *

Nine days means one day for mustering the troops, six days of training them, and one day of rest.

Nine days of planning, gathering intel, and checking equipment.

* * *

“Are you really sure you should be taking to the field?” Netossa asks, over dinner that first night.

“Yes,” Spinnerella replies. “Someone has to watch your back; I’m not raising this kid alone.”

Netossa takes a deep breath. “All right. So; how do we do it? According to intel, we can pretty much expect widespread suppressor deployment.”

“I’ve actually picked up some rune sorcery; it’s only the one spell, but it’s the one we need; it’s the one that detects suppressors. Then we just carry one of those big rifles each and we can be rid of the area-protection with a few well-placed shots.”

Netossa chews in silence for a moment. “The personal protection is still going to screw me over.”

Spinnerella nods. “Braid your tethers. Use that high-strength light-weight cable the fabricators can make. You’ll have to find some anchor points to pull from, and you’ll have to be more careful in deployment, but it’ll give you options.”

“And you? No taking their breath away this time.”

“You know I’m sorry about that,” Spinnerella says. “But yes; in that case Adora herself actually taught me what to do. There’s plenty of nasty things wind can carry where people doesn’t want it to go. Poison, dye, flammable things, to name a few.”

“You’re terrifying,” Netossa says.

Spinnerella smiles.

“It’s kinda hot.”

* * *

Micah looks at the glove. “It feels kind of like cheating.”

“No,” Glimmer says. “Cheating is me using the Moonstone to counter-spell enemy sorcerers into oblivion. _That_ is the march of progress.”

Micah holds out a hand, and just _wishes_ for the spell he wants; the Third Flame of Elm, and the headband reads his intention, the data library of spell circles in the dedicated data storage unit on his belt supplies it, and the hologram projector in his glove renders it.

The spell goes off, lighting an intensely hot blue flame.

“We could outfit everyone with one of these; perfect casting, unlimited library of spells to anyone literate in rune sorcery. Even mom could cast with it. But I need your help,” Glimmer says. “You’re the best rune sorcerer in the world.”

“I’ll start transcription work straight away,” Micah says.

“Thanks dad,” Glimmer says, and with a beat of her wings, rises up to kiss him on the cheek. Then she blinks away.

Micah’s heart flutters a little.

* * *

Rogelio puts the blowtorch down. “Heat the iron.”

“You’re serious?” Frosta says.

“Deadly,” Rogelio says, holding out a white-hot iron in one hand with a set of tongs, and the cold iron in the other, with a matching pair of tongs.

“I’ve tried this, you know, imagining caloric flowing from one vessel to another. It’s the same as doing it in sequence.”

“Caloric theory is inaccurate. Visualize like we practiced, please.”

Frosta concentrates; her new eyes itch a little still.

The one rod fades to black; the other heats up over cherry red to orange, yellow, and then white. It’s easy; like pouring water from one cup to another.

“I can’t believe that worked,” Frosta says.

Rogelio smiles. “It took some digging to find this,” Rogelio says. “Scorpia had similar benefit from familiarity with the right scientific texts. Next let’s try the impossible one.”

He quenches the hot rod in a jug of water, stirring it vigorously until it is pleasantly lukewarm. Then he picks the jug up, and holds it next to the cold iron rod. “Heat the iron.”

Rogelio’s expression is unreadable.

Frosta scowls at him, and heats the iron. The water freezes solid.

* * *

“I’ve made some changes to the Boots,” Entrapta says.

Bow leans in to read over her shoulder. “Hover system and reactionless thrusters?”

“Just as a backup for rough terrain, wheels are still superior in traction and hard-accell. Nothing like good old direct-reaction.”

“Looks good; got a prototype ready?”

“Just sent it off to the fabricator; do you think you can coach Wrodak and Hordak?”

“Sure thing.” Bow gives her a thumb’s up.

“Oh, and my social reminders says to say congratulations to you. Damara says you are going to get married after the war,” Entrapta says. “Speaking from personal experience, marriage is very fulfilling. Weddings are confusing, though.”

“Thanks. I’ll be sure to tell Glimmer.”


	18. Abolition, Part 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cw: battle violence

“ _When you get this message, it means I didn’t make it. I’m sorry I didn’t say goodbye to you, but truth is I have a lot of good, I’m not strong enough; not if I have to go through with this plan…_ ”

Adora turns off the playback — it’s the same opening for all of her goodbye messages — but this one continues in her mind:

_Cat… I’m sorry. I hope you won’t remember me for all the ways I’ve wronged you. I love you. And I hope you find happiness._

She splashes water in her face, and reaches for the towel. Wiping her face, she looks at herself in the mirror. The glowing sigil in front of her sternum is a reminder of her mortality, despite all of She-Ra’s power. It is a reminder of her purpose.

Of the hand she has been dealt. She tries not to look at it.

She ties her hair in a bun, and starts wiggling into her white armor suit. Her heritage.

Over that, a shoulder belt with a magnetic weapons chuck, and a utility belt across her hips. Just practical.

Then over that, the red jacket. The Horde that was; the soldier she’s always been. Really, Red always suited Catra better.

She grabs a shoe-horn and steps into the combat boots. Black armored synthetic leather with a purple undertone, wings emblazoned on the ankles and a little bit of heel. Glimmer.

The rolled-up collar of the camouflage cloak goes on her shoulders. A cloak befitting of a ranger.

Halcyon springs to her brow and forms the usual winged forehead protector with the owl-beak. Starlight, lost and found. And Catra, lost and found. And lost again.

Deep breath.

She calls Parabell and Stella Nova to her side, the sword sheathing itself in the straps of the shield. Then she picks up the Toha-Zev rifle and hangs it in the chuck — bit of a breach of security to have that in her room, but if anyone has a problem, she’s the damn _Captain._

Then she steps out of the bathroom, and heads for the door.

Outside, she finds Bow and Glimmer, suited up, but both unarmed.

“Are you ready?” Glimmer asks.

“I’m the one with the Failsafe. I have to be,” Adora says. She looks at her two best friends in the whole world. “Are you sure you guys should come? We don’t know what to expect from the Heart of Etheria. Compared to Krytis it’s going to be… Alive. It could be dangerous.”

“There’s no way we’re letting you do this on your own,” Bow says. “Whatever we find, we face it together. Besides, the alternative is a battle field in the Southern Reach, which is one hundred percept guaranteed to be dangerous, so…”

Adora nods, silently. “Any… Any word from Catra?” she asks.

“I heard she’s been operating on the periphery of the resistance,” Glimmer says. “Double Trouble is the only one who knows for sure what she’s up to, and they’re not telling.”

“She’s not coming; I shouldn’t hold out hope,” Adora concludes.

“I can’t imagine she’s going to sit out the last battle. She hasn’t abandoned us,” Bow says.

“No. Just me.”

Adora draws a shaking breath. Bow and Glimmer hug her, and she has to stoop down to meet them.

“If— If I don’t make it,” Adora says, voice strained, “I’ve recorded some goodbyes for everyone…”

“There’s still a chance, mathematically, that you’re going to survive,” Glimmer says, “and going by our track record, we’ve done a lot of practically impossible things in the last month.”

Adora smiles weakly. “I like your optimism,” she says.

“Let’s go get suited up,” Bow says, patting Adora on the shoulder.

* * *

In the changing rooms, they encounter the other three: Entrapta, Wrodak, and Hordak, gearing and arming up for deep insertion.

“Captain, Master Bow, Mistress Glimmer” Hordak greets them. “How fares your courage?”

“We’re good,” Adora lies. “You?”

Hordak looks at Wrodak helping Entrapta put on her exoskeleton suit. “We’re as ready as can be,” he notes, dryly. “Master Bow, since I might not get the chance later; thank you for your coaching.”

“No problem,” Bow says. They shake hands.

Hordak picks up his Toha-Zev rifle, and the Zev squad automatic next to it, hanging both on magnetic chucks on the back of his exoskeleton; then he hangs a heavy pack of supplies at the small of his back, and latches a stiff bandoleer of grenades across his chest.

Bit of a breach of security to have weapons in the changing rooms, but who cares at this point.

Wrodak finishes bolting up Entrapta’s suit and arms himself as well. Entrapta picks up her comically large backpack.

“All right,” Entrapta says. “Captain Adora, good luck down there underground.”

“Good luck out there in the cold,” Adora says back. “Wrodak, I’m promoting you to head of security. Keep an eye on these two, will you? The Swift Wind is going to need its infirmarist and chief engineer when this is over.”

Wrodak smiles. “I will, Captain.”

“Bow, Glimmer, gear up,” Adora says.

The two duck into the opposite locker room to do so: Bow has an exoskeleton to slip into as well, and Glimmer is bringing rather a lot more guns and gadgets than usual.

Adora stands at attention. “I want you three to know that it’s been a privilege to have you aboard my craft.” She salutes.

Hordak stands at attention in response, and salutes as well, and Entrapta and Wrodak follow suit.

“Now, you have a staging area to get to. Move out.”

Entrapta calls for a portal, and it opens there, directly in the locker room. She can’t actually fit through the door in her current getup. They file out through the wormhole, and Wrodak stops as the last one, looking back at Adora, and giving her a thumb up.

And then they are gone.

“Hey.”

Adora turns to see Damara standing in the doorway.

“Hey mom,” Adora says.

Damara holds out a heavy satchel bag. “I packed you some provisions for the trip. Just in case it draws out.”

Adora takes the offered bag and looks inside: water bottles, MRE rations, first aid kit.

“Thanks.”

“Come with.”

Damara crosses the hall, and Adora follows, into the other locker room where Glimmer is mounting the exoskeletal power-components to Bow’s suit with an impact wrench.

“I got a delivery earlier this morning addressed to the three of you.”

A hover tray glides through the door, with a cardboard box on it. On the lid, written in marker, is:

> _To: Flyboy, Sparkles, Ad._

“From Catra?” Adora asks.

“She didn’t hand it over in person, if that is what you ask. I can’t tell you how she delivered it without me noticing.”

With a knife-sized manifested blade, Adora cuts open the box, and finds three rolled-up cloaks, much like the one she’s wearing right now. There’s a note.

Adora hands it to Damara to read.

“Invisibility cloaks, to help you three dumbasses slip by Prime’s forces,” Damara quotes.

Adora takes her standard issue cloak off, and tries on the one from Catra. A push a button on the collar unfolds the garment; revealing matte and deeply black fabric.

“Conspicuous,” Bow notes.

In her visor, she activates the configurable cosmetics, and adjusts the color to a more sensible dark green. Then she activates the ‘invisibility’ option.

“Holy shit,” Glimmer says.

“What?” Adora asks, looking at her hands; they look _translucent._

“You’re invisible.”

“Comprehensively so,” Damara concurs.

Glimmer hands the impact wrench to Damara, who picks up the task of gearing up Bow, and then she too dons an invisibility cloak. As soon as she activates it, Adora springs into view as a translucent figure to her eyes.

“It works just the same as Catra’s invisibility!” Glimmer concludes.

Damara finishes up Bow’s exoskeleton. “Well, I suggest the three of you cloak up.”

“And you?” Adora asks.

“I’ve been promoted to _Air Marshal._ While you were training, I’ve been automating the combat drone fleet,” Damara says. “I’ll be providing air support and superiority for the land incursion.”

“That’s a big responsibility,” Glimmer says.

“I intend to rise to the occasion. Now get going!” Damara says.

Adora steps forward and hugs her. “Goodbye, mom.”

Damara hugs her back, tightly.

As they file out through the portal, Damara has to take a moment to steady herself. A part of her considers the possibility that Swift Wind could end up being a very lonely place after today, if things go south. Then she’d almost rather the universe be destroyed.

She translocates to the control center.

“Hope?”

“`Damara.`”

“Are you ready to deploy the orbital murder-holes?”

“`Yes.`”

“Good.”

That was another plan of hers: the First-Ones’ orbital defense _weapon_ was supposed to be just another function of the Heart. However, the orbital defense _targeting_ is a separate separate and more importantly _intact._

It was just a matter of automating the orbital murder-holes, and hooking them up to Hope’s infrastructure.

“`Are you ready with the drones?`”

Damara blinks, surprised. “Yes; I’m running final diagnostics on the swarm now.”

“`Good.`”

* * *

The staging area for the ‘land invasion’ of the southern reach is a disjointed collection of underground chambers. They’ve managed to muster a total of two thousand resistance fighters.

Backed by the by-now _considerable_ production capability of the resistance as a whole, that number is trebled by the use of buddy-bots, and further augmented by personal recon drones. Every single woman and man ready to fight for Etheria and the wider universe is armed to the teeth with the refined and reliable arms of the First-Ones.

And they are about to deploy by transportation that defies all forms of conventional logistics.

In any other context, this army would be the most formidable fighting force on any world. But despite the advanced simulator training environment adapted from the Swift Wind, and the cthonic infrastructure accessible to Damara and Hope, they are still under-trained and under-drilled.

Lonnie has pulled out all the stops and made sure there’s a functioning hierarchy of command in place.

As Colonel of the Runestone Wielder Corps, Scorpia is in charge of the single biggest force multiplier available to the Resistance; sans Sweet Bee, Peekablue, Glimmer, and Entrapta, of course.

(It might seem unwise to promote to this office, someone with a tendency to fry communications equipment on touch, but some anonymous technician solved that handily: Scorpia can hear radio waves, and speak in them too. Then it’s just a matter of a narrow-beam transmitter aboard the Swift Wind and a tracking spell for targeting.)

They’ve all come together here, at the end of the world.

Scorpia claps her hands — the gloves come off later when the fighting starts — to get the attention.

Frosta in her power suit(s) chatting with Mermista with a water-proofed buddy-bot, Netossa with two buddy-bots holding hands with Spinnerella accompanied a handful of buddy-drones, Huntara with a heavy powered exoskeleton armor and a complement of both drones and bots packed into a frame on her back, conversing cordially with Cometa in shiny armor sitting on top of a cube of metal ten feet to a side.

“Are you okay, dear?” Perfuma asks her. Scorpia looks at her.

Becoming a full dryad has come with some changes for the two of them. For one, Scorpia has never been the little spoon before. For another, Perfuma has entirely eschewed the notion of wearing armor into battle. She stands as tall as Scorpia, with bark-like skin and hands that make fists the size of Scorpia’s head.

Still, Scorpia doesn’t call her ‘Perfect’ for nothing. Even wrought in living wood, her face is as lovely as ever.

Scorpia nods. “You? It’s going to be pretty cold out there.”

“Ironically, I’m better fit to resist it than I was before. Dryads are hardy to all of nature’s dangers.” Perfuma leans in and hisses Scorpia on the cheek.

Scorpia turns to the rest of them.

“If I can have your attention for a moment?”

All eyes turn to her.

"Listen, I know I’ve been ‘put in charge’ of all of us, but I’m not going to pretend I’m qualified to give orders. We’re all competent people, and more importantly we’re the only experts on our own powers.

“But I am going to remind you, that I’m your friend. And if you need help, if you have a question, if you need someone to help you make a decision, if you need me to pull rank, feel free to ask. Okay?”

“I might need some of that,” a voice says from the back of the room.

They all turn to look, and Catra emerges from the shadow, flanked by six figures shrouded in darkness; like silhouettes of some description of modified buddy-bots. They have tails and articulated ears on rounded heads.

“If you can spare it,” Catra adds.

“Catra, you look like hell,” Scorpia says.

Catra nods. She does. Dark circles around her eyes, unclean fur, greasy hair. “Because we all know I care about my appearance,” Catra snarks.

“I care about your combat efficiency and your sanity as an operative,” Scorpia says.

“I’m fine, I promise.”

“All right, but if you start slipping, I’m taking you off the battlefield.”

“Deal,” Catra says.

There’s a moment of tense silence.

“Seriously, girl,” Netossa says. “Are you okay?”

“No. Of course not. I’m about to go fight a war. Being okay with _that_ would be an indicator of insanity,” Catra says. “And I don’t have to be. I just have to be able to fight.”

“Whats with your buddy-bots?” Frosta asks.

“They’re my blackguards,” Catra says. Then the six figures de-materialize.

“All right, Catra, welcome to the Runestone corps,” Scorpia says. "Our task is to be available as extra firepower if any of the other divisions come under attack they cannot fight off. We’re talking mass-deployment of triple-clones, or something even worse. The sorcery corps will be taking care of anti-teleportation wards if Prime decides to teleport troops in our faces.

"Intelligence suggests we’re _mostly_ safe, just us Runestone wielders, since he’ll need us for activating the Heart. Still, I don’t want anybody taking chances.

"Until then, I want us to focus on the secondary objective: disabling the boring wells. It’s probably futile, but we have to try. It will have the additional benefit of drawing out Prime’s forces for when the main attack begins.

“The Cthonic Administrator has provided maps suggesting what boring holes present the greatest risk of Prime gaining access to the heart. That’s still two hundred wells.”

* * *

Lonnie stands in the middle of a virtual space, not unlike a situation room.

Surrounding her in avatar, is all the faction-leaders and all of her chosen general staff. The countdown to deployment is running out.

“Southern Reach incursion force status?” she says.

“ _Air Marshal Damara here; drone swarm standing by._ ”

“ _Colonel Juliet here; first infantry division ready to deploy._ ”

“ _Colonel Cobalt here; second infantry divisions ready to deploy._ ”

“ _Colonel Nightshade here; third infantry division ready to deploy._ ”

“ _Colonel Kyle here; portal-artillery battery standing by._ ”

“ _Colonel Niel here; naval patrol ready to deploy._ ”

“ _Colonel Micah here; sorcery corps ready._ ”

“ _Colonel Scorpia here; Runestone corps ready._ ”

“Anti-orbit batteries, status call?”

“`Cthonic Marshal Hope here; orbit defense fire ready to commence.`”

“Hive Engine infiltration team, status call?”

" _Director Sweet Bee here; standing by._

“Cthonic descent team, status call?”

“ _She-Ra here; standing by._ ”

The countdown reaches zero.

“Operation Cascade, commence. I repeat, Operation Cascade, commence.”

Now begins the calm before the storm. All of her plans are about to become casualties, in accordance with the old adage; hopefully her corporals can pick up the slack.

Up on the surface, all over the planet, indeed all through the galaxy, the image of She-Ra appears, urging each and every person under Horde Prime’s heel to rise up against him.

“Steady going, General,” Peekablue says beside her. “If you have nerves now, you won’t last the battle.”

“Mind your words, Princeling,” Angella says to her other side, and puts a motherly hand on her shoulder. “You’re doing great, General.”

* * *

All nine of them step through the portal, onto the dark, blasted tundra of the Southern Reach. Image intensification in their visors kick on automatically.

The air is so devoid of moisture and so cold that the ice sublimates. There’s nary a hint of precipitation year round: the snow forming the massive glaciers is carried in by the wind from the top of the oceanic ice shelves.

Geographically, the south pole of Etheria lies just off the coast of the Southern Reach, perpetually accessibly by a massive ice shelf.

In the oceans around, life thrives in the icy depths. On land, is the coldest, driest desert on the planet, shrouded in complete darkness of winter four months per year and bathed in unending twilight of summer. The sun never rises more than a finger’s breadth above the horizon.

The Crimson Wastes is downright inviting in comparison. Fitting that the battle against end of the world would happen at the end of the world.

Perfuma and Cometa both power up.

Perfuma’s legs unravel and intertwine, becoming a tail, which sprouts legs, and quickly grows to monstrous proportions; from her waist, like a skirt, petals spring, growing teeth at the edges, and fleshy texture on the inside. Her war form, conjured in an instant.

Cometa’s giant cube of metal becomes liquid like mercury, and flows around her, forming a titanic humanoid form, forty feet tall, slender, and feminine.

“All right,” Scorpia says, looking at a ruggedized tablet fitted inside a steel cage with inlaid surge-protection enchantments. “We’ve got our coordinates. We’re splitting up in twos: Catra you’re with Netossa and Spinnerella.”

“Look,” Catra says, pointing skywards.

Above them, it looks almost like a meteor shower. Every second, dozens to hundreds of flashes of light show in the night sky, as Horde ships in low orbit run themselves through on globs of seafloor silt dropped from portals — silt being just as effective as rocks at destroying the hulls of spacecraft at orbital velocities, and having the beneficial property of being viscous yet liquid, and thus feeding itself through the portals due to the pressure difference.

“It’s begun.”

“That means we’re on the clock, let’s move out!” Scorpia says.

Then Scorpia leaps into the air, and lands on the shoulder of Cometa’s colossus, which takes off running at incredible speed.

Frosta and her two power-armor clad buddies climb onto Perfuma, and a large portal opens for them to slip through.

Mermista requests a small portal, and through it draws a large volume of water-antifreeze mixture capable of resisting the cold. Huntara lifts a thin plate of rock out of the ground, placing it onto the water, and stepping onto it. Mermista steps directly into the water, and then the two of them race off at the speed of a needle-thin stream through a blown gasket.

“It’s dark,” Catra says.

“Yeah?” Netossa asks.

“Are you okay, dear?” Spinnerella asks her. “You seem out of it.”

Catra turns to look at them; a glowing pair of mismatched eyes in the near black night. She smiles. “ _Darkness is mine to command._ ”

“Look, if you want to do your whole creepy spiel, that’s fine by me, but can we get a move on?” Netossa asks.

“Allow me,” Catra says.

She gestures, and darkness envelops them briefly, and then they are somewhere else; standing on icy ground. In the middle distance is their target. A small outpost base guarding a bunker complex fifty feet underground, inside which the drilling takes place. Shielded against portals and teleportation, of course; and thus impervious to all but the most involved artillery bombardment.

Something screams overhead in the darkness, an aircraft; followed by another. Brief flashes of orange light up in the sky.

“Good thing we’re not up there, huh?” Netossa says.

Spinnerella takes her hand, and gives it a squeeze.

Catra shoves both hands in the pockets of her fur-lined coat, and starts walking casually towards the base.

“Hey, Catra, we need to make a plan of attack—” Netossa says.

Then there’s a flicker in the dark, and it takes her a moment to understand what she’s seeing.

A dozen night-black figures coming into being mid-sprint, and darting towards the outpost.

“I have a plan: attack.”

Moments later, gunfire begins.

By the time they reach the gates, the gunfire has stopped. They’re greeted by two black figures, holding Horde-made automatic rifles, standing over the corpses of four clones.

Over the gate, in the lookout tower, the machine gunner and his assistant has been thrown over the side, landing in the barbed wire on top of the fence.

“Interesting,” Spinnerella says.

The blackguards come running back to Catra, vanishing into nothing as they come into reach.

“Netossa, could you put up a woven shield?” Catra asks. “And Spinnerella, a bubble of vacuum around us.”

They share a look, then do as requested. There’s a tremor in the ground.

“That was the demolition charges; the bunker has been collapsed,” Catra explains. “Next?”

“Calling Scorpia,” Netossa says. “We’ve got a confirmed objective kill.”

“ _What? Already?_ ”

“Catra’s a real menace. I think we should let her operate with discretion.”

“ _If you think so, Netossa; I trust your judgment._ ”

Catra looks between the two of them. “You’re going to cut me loose?”

Netossa shakes her head. “You take orders from me. Take out the drilling well to the south-east, we’ll take out the one due south.”

Catra nods and vanishes into the darkness of the night.

“I see the ‘family resemblance’ with She-Ra, there,” Spinnerella notes. “She’s on a different level.”

* * *

The Hive Engine itself has been carried to Etheria on a gigantic freight-carrying spacecraft, into which it is directly integrated. It has landed in a deep crater — purpose made by way of a small nuke — the center-piece of an entire metropolis-sized military installation.

Protecting the hive engine is not only the artificial geography, but also a portal ward maintained round-the-clock by leagues of clone sorcerers, as well as the fact that the hive engine is covered in fifty feet of concrete.

Everything is dug in: airstrips lead into tunnels, turrets and missile batteries pop up from underground, and the spaceport landing pads are recessed and covered in huge sliding blast doors. All of it has been dropped whole-sale from orbit into artificial craters — thankfully mostly made by conventional munitions — and then covered in concrete. At scale, it is a more impressive feat of expedient engineering by far than the construction of three refugee cities in as many weeks.

Micah looks over the gathered sorcerers.

Every single sorcerer has a buddy-drone by their side. They are fitted in heavy armor, carrying the suite of technological sorcery aides of Micah and Glimmer’s design, a shield, and a firearm. Two hundred sorcerers of none to middling skill in battle sorcery turned instantly into fine war mages.

“All right,” he says. “I’m not going to mince words here, we’re putting out lives on the line. But if we don’t win this today, we’ll likely lose everything forever. Barely any of you are soldiers; and I commend you for volunteering regardless. It’s been inspiring to work with all of you; I say we go behold the fruits of our labors now.”

Their mission parameters is to follow the first division into battle, one team of five mages to a platoon of twenty-five soldiers — which counting buddy-bots is more like an entire company.

The portals open and they file out onto the snow-swept rocky plain, in the dark. “Misdirection cover!” Micah barks.

Dozens of narrow telescoping poles are erected, each carrying a misdirection spell, and an illusion that obscures visual and heat signatures.

Above, the aerial skirmish picks up; the staccato of explosions and the buzz of high rate-of-fire machine guns fill the skies.

Orange beams of fire start lancing out of the sky, like a horrific mockery of lightning strikes.

The first division join them in the dark, marching through portals in orderly fashion. This is the closest obscured location to the edge of the Horde wards; a small natural crater. Just large enough for three thousand bodies to move out. Damara’s harassment of the Horde aerial presence focuses on keeping them away from this area in particular.

Juliet joins up with Micah. “Colonel,” she greets him.

“Colonel,” he greets her in turn.

“It’s very strange to be a rank-peer of the king,” Juliet notes.

“Yeah, well, get over it,” Micah says with a wry smile. “I’m not here to give orders to anyone but my sorcerers.”

Juliet looks around, and puts a hand to the side of her helmet. “This is Colonels Micah and Juliet, calling Colonel Scorpia, can we borrow Huntara as agreed?”

There’s a short pause.

“ _Colonel Juliet,_ ” Scorpia replies. “ _Huntara is on her way to you, along with Empress Mermista._ ”

Juliet nods. “First division, prepare to advance. Shields out.”

“Misdirection spells and bullet wards at the ready!” Micah similarly orders. “Join up with your platoons!”

A portal opens down in the crater and Mermista and Huntara step out. Mermista is followed by a mass of clear water, liquid despite the frigid cold. Huntara is enormously imposing given her stature in addition to her equipment. The common soldiers part for them as they make their way to Micah and Juliet.

“Empress,” Micah greets.

“King,” Mermista replies.

“Sir, Ma’am,” Huntara says. “I was briefed, something about digging trenches?”

Juliet checks the time in her visor. “You two have been engaged with the enemy for half an hour now; tell me if we need to delay this so you can rest. I’m prepared to push our time-table fifteen minutes if need be.”

“No need,” Huntara says. “It’s been light work.”

Juliet links their suit visors, and calls up an overlaid three-dimensional map, visible only to them. “Let me show you our where we need you to dig,” she begins.

* * *

The counter-battery fire requests from the drone swarm start flooding in.

The large hologram screen display shows over fifty locations; detailing locations. Kyle and Rogelio work the console together as a well-trained team, selecting and delegating each firing task to the twenty cannon teams in the hall below. Each one can shoot every ten seconds without risk of overheating.

Each cannon is an up-scaled raygun much like the ones aboard the swift wind, but each with a power output almost an order of magnitude greater. They fire into closed containers of extremely clear glass, at magnetically actuated diamond prisms, redirecting the beams to almost any angle in space, through a portal.

The crews manning the cannons are technicians; non-front-line volunteers drilled in the maintenance and trouble-shooting of this entire weapons system.

Each fire commander surveys the target through direct portal viewing and heavy magnification, selecting the angle of attack and true target, and pulling the trigger at the appropriate moment.

The humming buzz of capacitors charging fill the hall, and then the sharp retorts of plasmatized air as the raygun beams go out, melting anti-air turrets and missile batteries. The technicians stand at the ready to instantly replace any of the hot-swappable likely-to-break components, and clean the lenses between each shot, for fear that a speck of dust will get caught in the beam and literally explode, fracturing the glass — and even then, there are spare prism arrays on hand.

* * *

Catra walks up to the gate of another drilling site, letting herself become visible.

The two clone guards at the gate, dressed in heavy arctic gear, immediately point their rifles at her.

She points a pair of finger guns back. “Bang.”

And then they turn their rifles on themselves instead. Off-colored brain matter decorate the ice underfoot.

“Wow, I can’t believe that worked,” Catra says to herself. Then she manifests a grenade launcher and takes out the watch tower machine gun emplacement with a single well-aimed shot.

The gate itself is no match for her strength; a single well-placed kick breaks the locks open.

A group of soldiers are lying in wait on the other side open fire, and all miss until their weapons malfunction in one way or another; spent casings jamming on ejection, cartridges failing to feed, and trigger linkages seizing due to frost.

Catra reaches out with her backhand and pulls the pin on one of their grenades, then with an invisible claw, slicing the fabric holding the safety lever in place. Frantically clearing their malfunctioning rifles, none of the clones notice. Two seconds later they are all blown apart.

A swipe of her claws takes out the lock on the gate leading to the bunker, and as she descends, the electrical lighting malfunctions, plunging the entire area below ground into darkness.

 _Her_ darkness.

* * *

They make their way through the early-autumnal Whispering Woods, on foot from the closest safe portal spot.

The Crystal Castle has been thoroughly captured. Just in the colonnade courtyard alone is seven guards.

Glimmer blinks them directly past all of them: it’s an honest mistake, not covering their _entire_ operation in Runestone suppression spells when they did decide to erect portal wards. Inside the hallway, they proceed to the lobby, which is where they run into their first major hurdle.

Everything except the main elevator shaft leading to the dome, has been sealed off. And Adora’s not even sure she knows the way to the Shaft; the only time she saw it, was when Light Hope sent her there.

There’s a silence spell on their visors; letting them speak normally and to each other, without being heard by the two dozen clone soldiers. All of the cover erected by the resistance has been left in place, and is now staffed by clones.

“So, what do we do?” Glimmer asks.

Adora considers it for a moment. “Can you cast the clone-Prime-telepathy disruption spell on _all_ of these guys?”

Glimmer nods.

“At once?”

Glimmer hesitates, then nods.

“On three,” Adora says. “One…”

Bow nocks an arrow.

“Two…”

Glimmer readies herself.

“Three!”

Two dozen spell-circles manifest in the air above the clone soldiers. Before any of them can react, Adora lashes out with a dozen manifestations of Parabell, cutting each and every one of them down before they can cry out.

Two dozen bodies hit the floor in four dozen pieces.

“Okay, now what?” Bow says.

Adora turns to the guardian hologram. It seems to be speaking, but no sound comes from it.

“Silence spell,” Glimmer says. With a wave of her hand, she dispels it.

“`Administrator detected: welcome She-Ra. Be advised, multiple unauthorized intrusions have occurred since your last visit. Security may be compromised.`”

“I need a connection to the Cthonic Administrator system.”

“`Query Acknowledged.`”

The hologram flickers, and is replaced by a child-like blue figure. “`Hello, Adora.`”

“Oh good, it worked,” Adora says. “You’re Hope?”

“`Indeed.`”

“Good. We need access to the shaft leading to the Heart.”

Hope turns and points; a glowing line appears in the floor. “`It appears the elevator cannot open.`”

“It’s been welded shut, probably,” Bow says.

Adora gestures and a Parabell blade zips over there, neatly inserting itself between the elevator doors and slicing through the welds. The doors slide open.

“`Be advised: I have limited influence in the Lower Sphere. I might not be able to help you.`”

“Thanks, Hope,” Adora says, and starts walking. “Say ‘hi’ to Damara from me.”

Glimmer and Bow follow, and Bow casts a glance over his shoulder at Hope, who stands there wondering for a moment how to respond.

“`Will do.`”

They reach the elevator, and the doors close behind them.

“So. Hope?” Glimmer asks.

“Damara constructed them out of the remnants of Light Hope. She assured me she cut out the bad parts. They’re the one shooting down all the Horde spacecraft right now.”

“They’re just a kid,” Bow says.

“Yeah,” Adora says.

“That’s kind of fucked up.”

“Yeah.”


	19. Abolition, Part 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cw: battle violence, battle injuries

Lonnie knows the point of this operation was never to win.

One of the many revelations to come out of Hordak’s scientific divisions, in particular the rather less-than-glamorous War Mathematics Division, was the revelation that soldier morale is the paramount to the combat effectiveness of a unit of soldiers, and that as little as ten percent casualties is often sufficient to demoralize into retreat or surrender.

Were it the case that Horde Prime’s forces was a regular fighting force of soldiers in possession of free will, each resistance soldier would have to kill or incapacitate nine clone soldiers.

But as things are, that number is more like _eighty-five._

Victory by doctrine of arms alone is impossible. The resistance has three thousand able fighters to its name each with at least one buddy-bot, the twelve Runestone Wielders, and a thousand or so non-combatant technicians.

The Southern Reach planetary Horde base holds a quarter million _soldiers._ Clones sitting around on their guns, waiting for something to shoot at. The support and logistics workforce outnumber the soldiers three to one, and only need to head to the weapon lockers to join the fray.

In fact, only counting the sorcerously enhanced super clones, the resistance is outnumbered.

Damara’s ten thousand drones are only remotely capable of projecting air power by virtue of their superior speed and agility, and that they operate as a whole greater than the sum of their parts. The Horde has nearly twice that number in planes and drones, already in the air, and another three times as many grounded.

The only good news is that the orbital murder-holes are working precisely as intended, and Horde orbital presence is declining steeply. There is simply no way to escape out to geosynchronous orbit in time, since Hope deliberately targets burn signatures; the ten minutes it takes a dropship to gain enough speed to jaunt out to a safe apoapsis is more than enough for Hope to destroy it.

The projection Lonnie is looking at says the Horde will loose thirty percent of its ships, and that descent to lower orbits will be basically impossible.

The distance of nearly ten thousand miles out to geosynchronous orbit, will put a damper on both orbital bombardments using bombs. The directed energy weapons are still destructive at that range, but nearly impossible to aim at specific targets.

Geosynchronous orbit of course has zero relative velocity to the surface of Etheria, so Hope’s trick of dropping ocean floor sludge will become ineffective. Conventional munitions will, however, be effective, and the missile batteries are ready to be deployed.

Further retreat outwards will make kinetic weapons feasible again, as Etheria’s rotation will overtake orbiting craft; and by retreating beyond the range of resistance portal capability will put the Horde’s bombard craft out of reach of the planet’s surface with their guns.

So, for the time being, Etheria is actually safe from immediate destruction. Lonnie makes a mental memo to find some way to pin a medal on that hologram kid.

* * *

There’s a sudden explosion.

Kyle immediately jumps out of his seat and runs to edge of the bridge, leaping off and letting his hover belt kick into action, depositing him onto the floor.

There’s a massive cloud of smoke and dust at one end of the prism array. An alarm goes off: there’s too many fine particulates in the air. Everyone in the room hurry to put on dust masks.

There’s fire. People are running and yelling.

Kyle sprints for a fire extinguisher and starts putting out the fires quickly filling the artillery hall with smoke. The ventilation kicks in above, filling the scene with a droning hum. Several others get the same idea. Kyle throws his fire extinguisher to a guy running up to him.

He takes a step back from the mayhem. There’s six people lying on the floor, in various states of injury; shards of crystal litter the floor.

“All hands! First aid and casualty evacuation!” he yells. “Get the stretchers! Portals to the infirmary!”

The few technicians who are hanging back, watching the mayhem, get moving.a

“Someone tell me what the hell happened?!” he barks. “Smudged optics?”

“Sir!” one of the fire commanders say, from a few guns down, looking into his holo-interface. “Surveillance playback points to counter-battery fire, sir! Explosive munitions, not ablative phase explosion. They must have shot us back through the portal!”

“Shit!” Kyle says. He looks over the prism array. Number nineteen’s aiming prism is a total write-off; the two adjacent ones, twenty and eighteen are likely damaged. “Full calibrations! Inspect every gun for damage! I want to know what we have left and I want to know it in ten minutes! Rogie?”

“ _Yeah?_ ” Rogelio’s voice sounds in his ear-piece.

“Report to the Lonnie, call in reserves from the next shift to replace the casualties.”

“ _Way ahead of you._ ”

Kyle kicks off and glides over to gun number nineteen, hitting the emergency shutdown before something _else_ goes wrong. In his head he goes over the math for how much they can increase the firing distance before atmospheric interference causes an unacceptable drop in on-target energy deposition.

“One more thing!” he yells. “Before we resume firing — if we do — I want everyone on the floor in a hazard suit. We’re _not_ sending any more people to the infirmary; I don’t care how much the gloves get in the way!”

* * *

The soldiers file into the advance trenches, under the cover of misdirection. The report is in: they can only count on counter-battery fire from air support.

Huntara is making dug-outs in the rocky earth, and the men are reinforcing them with lightweight carbon supports. Every spare soldier is assisting with construction, touting strange but undeniably effective entrenchment tools: hand-held machines with a maw of rotating blades at one end, and a special hose at the other, eating through the rocky dirt and spewing gravel out the hose. Proper utilization of buddy-bots help preserve personnel stamina.

This is no temporary hideout. The sorcerers are beginning the work of warding these dugouts, fitting them out to always be available for portal deployment.

He touches the side of his helmet. “Colonel Scorpia, we’re about to commence with the operation, we could use some support in case the Horde decides to mobilize in response to out presence.”

There’s a pause.

“ _We’ll be with you shortly._ ”

* * *

Scorpia mutters a few procedure words to the interface back on the Swift Wind — without an intentionality controller in her suit, she doesn’t get the benefit of being able to just talk to people.

She is perching on the shoulder of Cometa’s colossus. They have managed a rather impressive six objective kills in the hour they have been at it. Reinforcements have begun trickling out to the drilling sites, making the fights harder. Still no sign of triple-clones or enhanced soldiers.

“All right, everybody, we’re being called back to the staging area to reinforce the first division; we’ve served our distraction purpose. Cometa and myself got six; Mermista and Huntara only got two, since they had to go help. Report your numbers.”

There’s a pause.

“ _This is Frosta; Perfuma and I have destroyed five drilling wells. Perfuma’s bomb-critters can’t handle the cold, or else we’d be ahead!_ ”

“Sounds good, kiddo,” Scorpia says jovially.

“ _Netossa here; Spinny and I have done four. They use a lot of supressors, so we’ve had to resort to our weapons and use our powers defensively._ ”

“Impressive still,” Scorpia says.

“ _One more thing,_ ” Netossa continues. “ _Catra is here with me. She’s complaining that she’s out of demolition explosive —_ ” Netossa pauses, likely to converse with Catra “ _— Catra reports twenty-nine kills._ ”

“Come in Catra,” Scorpia says. “How?”

“ _After the fighting my way in with the first three, I figured I might just… I guess you could call it ‘shadow-step.’ I could just shadow-step inside the drilling hall and toss a bomb. I’ve been taping HE grenades to demo-charges; I’m out of the latter, low on the former._ ”

Scorpia considers this for a moment. “You can ‘shadow-step’ even though there’s portal wards?”

“ _Yeah._ ”

“All right, Catra, make sure you take a resupply trip for more explosive. Keep working on the drilling wells; you’re better suited to it than the rest of us combined. If the Horde finds a counter measure, come join us at the staging trenches.”

“ _Yes ma’am._ ”

Scorpia hops down, landing hard on her feet forty feet below, and Cometa dissolves the colussus into a cuboid again, in preparation for portal travel; they are crossing half the subcontinent-sized island to get there.

“Did she just call me ma’am?”

“I think she did,” Cometa says.

* * *

Adora sends three blades down the tunnel they just came through, slicing open the ceiling, and causing a cave-in.

The Etherian main shaft is different from the one on Krytis: round in cross section, for one, brightly lit, for another. It’s almost like the air itself is glowing ever so slightly, bathing the whole space in gentle light.

Adora peers down into the abyss.

“We probably don’t have all that much time before they figure out what’s going on and get through back there,” Glimmer remarks.

“I confess, I hadn’t actually thought how we’d descend…” Adora says.

“I could blink us,” Glimmer says.

Adora shakes her head. “Something tells me that’s a bad idea.”

Bow and Glimmer turn to look at her. “Adora, you and I can both fly,” Glimmer says.

“And you can bet I’ve thought of something,” Bow says. “Several somethings. The simplest of which is just that I’m wearing a reactionless thruster pack —” he pats the device on the small of his back.

“Won’t that overheat from breaking?” Adora asks.

“It’s ruggedized. It’ll keep me falling at safe speeds for over two hours. It only takes half an hour to fall to the core of Etheria; well, absent air resistance. With air, assuming free fall, it’s going to take almost twenty hours.”

Adora nods. “When Catra and I traveled to the Heart of Krytis, it was a lot faster.”

“Yeah,” Bow says. “Well, the gondola-ride down was going to take use what, three days?”

“The obvious solution is that we dive,” Glimmer says.

“I already accounted for that,” Bow notes.

“No, I mean, a _power_ dive. We point the nose down and power on the engines.” She taps the jaw on her helmet. “I even have some aerodynamic modulation spells.”

“I’ll hook up my range-finder, so we get a proper fore-warning before we hit the bottom,” Bow says.

“Good. Then that is what we do,” Adora says. “And good job thinking ahead, Bow.”

Bow grins. “Hey, I’m the ordinary guy here; you two are all about magic, but all I need is my _mind!_ ” He strikes a pose as he says it.

Glimmer giggles.

Adora snorts. Then she manifests Parabell and cuts the railing away. They step up to the edge.

Glimmer casts a trio of spells, and on Adora’s bare skin, it feels like a film of soap is applied.

“On three,” Adora says. Then she jumps. “Three.” Bow and Glimmer follow, and they begin their descent in free-fall. They stabilize, and then go into a dive. Glimmer first, then Bow, and lastly Adora.

Glimmer coasts over to one side and casts the First Flame, sending her rocketing downwards on a plume of fire.

Bow smartly engages his reactionless thruster, and zips downwards, silently.

Halcyon forms the starlight thrusters on Adora’s toes, and she applies gentle thrust and rockets down into the belly of Etheria.

* * *

Deep in a dugout under the trench lines, Huntara stands, reading the map Peekablue has sent her.

“Any trouble?” Mermista asks her.

“No, it’s just — well, I guess it _isn’t_ my eyes; ever since She-Ra healed me I haven’t had a single problem.”

“Tired?”

“A little, yeah.”

“You’re allowed to pace yourself,” Mermista says. “We’re not going to kill Prime _today._ ”

Huntara looks at her. What little it has come up in conversation between the five of them — Scorpia, Spinnerella, Micah, and the two of them — has been marked by a shared desire for _vengeance._ One which, according to Scorpia, Catra shares.

She drops the enormous backpack containing her buddies, drones, and heavy weapons. Then she flips up her visor and takes a breath of freezing cold air, and coughs. “Damn! That perks you right up.”

Renewed, Huntara takes a stance against the wall, and with a slow hand movement begins shifting the bedrock.

There’s footsteps on the stairs above, and Scorpia appears. “How is it going?”

“We’re making progress,” Mermista notes.

“Good. We’re about to drop misdirection. Peekablue estimates it’s going to take Prime between ten and sixty minutes to muster a counter-attack.”

“And then the _fun_ begins,” Mermista says, without mirth.

* * *

“This feels profoundly foolish,” Wrodak complains.

The four of them — him, his brother, lady Entrapta, and lady Sweet Bee — are walking across the open blasted rocky plain of the Southern Reach, heading directly into enemy territory. Their destination, the Hive Engine, is far off and heavily guarded.

“The first infantry division have just started making a nuisance of themselves,” Sweet Bee notes. “That gives us plenty of cover for misdirection to work.”

“Are you sure?” Entrapta asks. “I’ve been spotted before, under misdirection spells.”

“Under spells cast by a skilled amateur,” Sweet Bee corrects, “and in situations where you were the center of attention no doubt.”

“Well, yeah,” Entrapta says.

“What you’re saying is,” Hordak notes, “that we, four resistance soldiers, walking _directly_ into enemy territory while casually conversing, is too preposterous to consider; and dedicating resources to looking for such an impossibly foolish incursion attempt is therefore a waste.”

“And my misdirection spells are state of the art,” Sweet Bee notes.

“Then what do we do when we get there?” Wrodak asks.

“Why, we dress up as Wasp Keepers, and walk in the front door,” Sweet Bee says. “And before you object, I once went an entire _year_ without attending court in person; only using my bug dolls. My disguise spells are _also_ state of the art, and we have two actual insiders to run point.”

They walk on in silence. “It still feels profoundly foolish,” Wrodak notes.

“Fighting Prime is, by it’s very nature, a fool’s errand,” Hordak says. “But sometimes, a scholar’s caution only serves to delay the inevitable.”

“Well said,” Sweet Bee notes. They crest another hill, and head down between a pair of recessed silos containing autonomous rotary auto canons.

Two bug dolls in hazard suits follow a dozen paces behind them, silently, under Sweet Bee’s effortless control.

* * *

There is no preceding artillery bombardment — or at least there is only very little of it. The portal artillery has come back online, down only two guns, which will both be back in action within six hours.

The drone swarm overhead keeps the air strikes at bay, too. It’s a scattered few shells that strike ground near the trench complex, sending showers of gravel around, without actually injuring anyone. When it becomes clear that exposed guns are swiftly smote to ruin at the hands of Kyle’s gunners, the Horde stops entirely.

And then there’s nothing, for thirty minutes.

The air battle above picks up, as one of the major hangars a hundred miles distant have had its gates opened after a shot from a raygun disabled it.

“ _We’ve got incoming!_ ” one of the spotters call out.

Ximena exhales. She is now _deeply_ regretting signing up for this. But then it was pretty much soldiering, or hanging around where Mira might find her; which sounded even less appealing. At least simulator training for a week straight was fun and interesting!

She checks the safety on her automatic rifle. Beside her, her buddy-bot — a shorter model, to match her own stature — is identically armed. Around her, sits her squad. The leader is a steadfast feliform woman, Captain Icewine.

“Positions!” Icewine says.

Ximena closes her eyes and focuses on her buddy. Acting through it, she steps it up on the firestep, and lets it glance over the parapet, taking aim. Only once she feels the coast is clear through it’s judgment, does she step up herself, flicking the safety off as she levels her weapon towards the enemy.

The no-man’s land beyond has been thoroughly ‘softened’ by Huntara of all people. Full of shallow troughs, stumbling blocks, and tiger pits. Ximena feels a sense of _belonging_ when she remembers that; someone from ass-backwater Yelsie, turned Runestone Princess, here, kicking ass on the same side as her.

And then they come.

Out of holes in the ground. Clones. Running at a dead sprint to wards the trench line, carrying huge rectangular shields and wearing heavy armor. They’d be peppering the trench with grenades if it wasn’t for the sorceries protecting the trench from just that — a gentle field of force keeping slow munitions airborne just long enough to clear the trench and explode harmlessly on the field above.

Ximena and her buddy take aim and start unloading on the enemy; as does dozens of other soldier-buddy fire teams. The quiet staccato of Zev gunfire fills the icy darkness, and the clones begin falling.

But it is not enough. Not nearly. Sprinting across the rough terrain as if it was nothing, the enhanced clones gain ground at a terrifying speed, and it seems only heavier fire can reliably bring them down.

As the loose column of clones near the trenches, they spread out, and then pandemonium begins.

One of them jumps into the trench, sailing directly over Ximena; she barely has time to turn as the clone kicks off against the opposite wall, draws his shield back for an edge-on strike — Ximena ducks under the blow. Panic sets in.

She brings up her rifle to fire, and he swats it away with his shield, drawing a pistol of his own and shooting Ximena in the chest. The armor plate dents, and the sound of impact reverberates through her suit; she stumbles sideways in shock, unhurt.

Her buddy bot tackles him to the ground. Ximena drops her rifle and draws her melee weapon, awkwardly from where she lies on the firestep. The sleek shaft has a good heft, and feeling her intention, it unfolds the contained axe blade.

Another clone lands next to the two on the ground and starts pounding his shield down on her buddy, denting the back plating with each strike.

Aided by the servos in her suit, Ximena pushes herself upright just as the clone brings down his shield. He pulls it back up, but she grabs the edge of it and even though the clone is much stronger, she delays it enough to sink the monomolecular edge of the axe blade through his helmet.

Retracting the blade to free it from his cranium releases a spray of off-color blood and brain matter.

The clone on the floor manages to push the buddy bot off himself and swipes her legs, sending Ximena to the trench floor. Through her armor, she feels the vibration as _another_ clone lands beside her. She looks up and regrets it; staring directly into the barrel of a large-caliber handgun.

Then the clone holding it spasms; a white beam punching a two-inch wide hole in his chest, and falls on top of her.

Moments later, the body is shifted off her, and a friendly face appears: one of her squad mates. A cobra-kin woman. She’s carrying a clunky rectangular rifle that Ximena dimly recognizes as the anti-armor weapon.

“Get up, sweet cheeks,” she says and offers a hand. Ximena takes it and is pulled to her feet.

Then the other woman’s buddy-bot steps up to her and hands over its own anti-armor rifle, holding out a hand to take Ximena’s automatic rifle.

They swap.

“Get up here!”

Ximena hops onto the firestep and aims the larger rifle — it’d be cumbersome if its weight wasn’t as nothing to her powered suit.

Together, they start shooting; and while the anti-armor rifles have a much slower cycling rate, they punch clean through the clones’ carried shields. It is nowhere near enough, and they are making a target of themselves; soon enough covering fire from a machine gun rips through the gravel around them.

“I never caught your name!” Ximena shouts.

“Nagaina!” she shouts back. “Kimena, right?”

“Ximena,” Ximena corrects, vocalizing the voiceless velar fricative.

A pair of clone soldiers drop into the trench a dozen yards off to the side, in between Ximena and Nagaina and the next fire team, who are still trying to use their automatics against the armored clones. Nagaina takes aim, but the clone is too fast and knocks her rifle away, sending the glowing beam into the sky. Her buddy bot opens fire, but the clone behind him brings a shield to bear.

Ximena takes aim and shoots him, the destructive energy discharge coming uncomfortably close to Nagaina.

Two more armored clones descend into the trench behind the survivor.

“ _Retreat! Fall back to the next trench!_ ” the call goes out.

Nagaina scampers back next to Ximena, grabs her by the arm, and together they run, their buddy-bots running after providing covering fire.

They sprint down the transfer trench, past a fire team equipped with anti-armor rifles, who lays a salvo into their pursuers. Then there’s a thunderclap in the distance.

“What was that?” Ximena yells.

“The big guns!” Nagaina replies. “The Scorpion Princess!”

They keep running.

“Don’t I know you from somewhere?” Ximena asks.

“Yeah! Yelsie!” Nagaina replies.

“Oh!”

“Yeah! Small world!”

* * *

“ _Breach team two, get ready!_ ”

Concrete looks back at the rest of the squad, and the five sorcerers they are escorting. The squad leader is a former marine Captain from Salineas by the name of Schuyler; dependable enough in the simulations, but by the man’s own admission, too long since he last saw active combat.

“Ready!” Schuyler calls behind Concrete. In front of him is two seasoned soldiers — Horde by their accent, and cagey about their history. An orc and a caniform, both women.

Fifty fathoms down the tunnel is a breaching charge in the rock wall.

“ _Three, two, one —_ ” There’d be an ear-splitting boom if it wasn’t for their helmets all blocking then noise. Their visors automatically switch to an alternate vision mode to see through the rock dust better, and they all start running for the breach.

It opens up to a rubble-strewn hallway cut from the raw stone, lit in green by instrumentation and white by overhead lights.

An alarm is already blaring.

“Which way, wizard?” Schuyler bellows.

Concrete takes up formation with the two veterans, their combined four buddy-bots bringing it up to seven guns pointed down one direction of the hallway.

“East!” a woman’s voice sounds.

A squad of clone soldiers turn a corner, immediately spotting their team, and Concrete and the other two open fire. A hail of holographic bullets tear through two of the soldiers, forcing the others in cover behind the corner.

“Move out!” Schuyler yells.

It’s thankfully a short ways to go. Concrete and the two women start moving one at a time, always keeping two of their guns and at least two of their buddy-bots’ guns pointed down the way they came, for security.

“This is it!” one of the sorcerers yell; they all look like the rest of the resistance soldiers, except none of them have buddy-bots. The room they have come to is some kind of nexus, an intersection of six different tunnel ways.

Here the five sorcerers deploy some kind of beacon; a chest-high cylindrical device that unfolds itself, monitoring it closely in some arcane fashion, the significance of which is utterly lost on Concrete.

Then six portals open up around them, and a significant portion of the second infantry division floods through.

* * *

“Triple clone!” Frosta calls out. “On our three o’clock.”

One of Perfuma’s eyes swivel in its socket to look at her outstretched pointing hand, and then follow it to the target.

“ _You have good eyes,_ ” her voice sounds in Frosta’s ear-piece.

“Thanks, I picked them out myself.”

They are hanging back from the battle by the front-line trenches, where Scorpia and Cometa are wreaking havoc on the enemy forces; both of them markedly less hampered by suppressor projectors than Frosta and Perfuma. Huntara and Mermista are both underground, digging tunnels with the engineering team, while Netossa and Spinnerella are joining the second infantry division in the raids.

Perfuma snorts. “ _What are we going to do about it?_ ”

The triple clone is coming in laterally, flying under its own power.

“Damara are you picking it up?” Frosta asks.

“ _Hm,_ ” Damara’s voice sounds. “ _It has a minimal radar cross-section; let me just establish some heuristics._ ”

“If you have all the data you need I’m going to try to kill it,” Frosta says. “It’s not under ARW-protection.”

“ _Oh, go right ahead._ ”

Frosta gestures to it, and her eyesight zooms in — another superbly useful aspect of the artificial eyes; they have intentionality-controlled magnification lenses built in.

The clone freezes solid, and falls out of the sky.

“That worked,” Frosta notes.

“ _What did you do?_ ” Perfuma asks.

“Well, since they regenerate, I figured I would disable it in a non-harmful manner. I froze it so fast and so cold it didn’t even form ice crystals on the inside. No damage, no regeneration. Well; apart from — I think that thing shattered when it hit the ground.”

“ _Clever._ ”

Then Frosta spots the _rest_ of the triple-clones. Like a column of an army, all rising into the air under their own power out on the flank of the trench complex.

Damara sends a squad of battle drones to strafe them and takes out a few; the subsequent strafe sees only one fall from the sky. A third has no effect.

“Okay, we’re officially in trouble,” Frosta says.

“ _I’ll inform command,_ ” Perfuma says.

Frosta reaches out with her power and flash-freezes a handful of the approaching grotesque clones. Then, under her heat-vision, she sees the remainder of them have their body temperatures rise to just below boiling. She tries freezing one of them and finds it simply heats itself faster than she can transfer its body heat into the air around it.

“We’re _really_ in trouble!” Frosta says.

* * *

“ _Catra?_ ”

Catra steps into the shadow of the arctic night, and emerges underground, lobbing a grenade taped to a bar of plastic explosive next to the drilling equipment. The clone technicians operating it barely has time to register what just happened before Catra is safely away again, and the entire bunker becomes a kill-zone.

Explosions in confined spaces are exponentially deadlier than in open air.

“Yeah?” Catra asks.

“ _We have a lot of triple-clones incoming,_ ” Scorpia says. “ _We can’t hold them off; they’re… They’re ‘sharing’ their immunities, if that makes sense._ ”

Catra turns towards the battle — it’s hundreds of miles away, there’s not even a glow on the horizon. Up above, the aurora Borealis waves in the sky.

“I’ll see what I can do.”

The nine days since she left the Starlight Brigade, she has spent recruiting the Magicats, sure, and getting hurt doing reckless raids in that interest. But she has not been neglecting her meditation sessions.

“What do you say?” she asks.

Melog manifests out of pure shadow-stuff beside her, standing at knee-height with a mane of billowing starfield.

It makes a small noise.

Then the darkness opens up before her, and they both walk through, from the blasted glacial plain, onto the blasted rock plain. Catra looks up and sees the triple-clones flying by overhead.

In the distance, over the trench complex, she sees the brilliant flash of a lightning strike.

She closes her eyes and _feels_ the connections there. Pure sympathetic entanglement. The basest and most versatile form of magic; a psychic link between the entire brood of abominations.

With a claw the size of vengeance itself, she reaches out and rips it to shreds.

  
_Break!_   


There’s a shudder through the clones. Catra takes out a Toha-Zev rifle, and takes aim; no doubt Damara has strafed them with the same kind of weapon. She shoots, and wounds one. Then she shoots another, wounding it too.

The two injured clones quickly locate her as a target and drop out of the sky.

Catra draws Bane, and its hilt elongates until it is a proper spear; its blade extends.

Descending on her like diving falcons, the two clones swoop in, six faces contorted in snarls, and right clawed hands outstretched.

Catra rolls to the side at the last fraction of a second and pivots the spear to slice open one of the clones, opening it up from shoulder to hip. It loses flight and tumbles hard on the rocky ground, leaving a trail of off-color blood and gore.

The other clone reverses hard, catching gravel with four hands and two feet to arrest its considerable momentum with a three-voiced battle cry.

She spins, drawing a handgun from nowhere and unleashing rapid automatic fire from the extended magazine at the other clone as it grinds to a halt. Darkness-infused bullets pepper its torso.

Then Catra vanishes both her weapons and turns, walking away. Both of the clones stagger and attempt to regenerate, only to find that their wounds do not. From them, as venom, darkness spreads, causing flesh to wither away like ash.

“Catra here, I’m coming to help,” she says, and shadow steps to the trenches, where the first division is already evacuating underground and into portals.

* * *

Even though it is so much faster than the elevator on Krytis, the descent is still mind-numbingly boring; and this time there’s no small-talk to fill the time, since staying on course at high speed is kind of demanding.

Bow is flying lead in their little V-formation — he is the pilot after all, and he isn’t trailing turbulence from any wing-tips.

“ _There’s something up ahead, in a few miles,_ ” he says over the wind-noise, muted by their visors.

“ _Oh thank the stars,_ ” Glimmer says.

“ _It’s not the bottom — it looks like the shaft is… Curving._ ”

“ _Come again?_ ” Adora asks.

“ _We’re barely halfway. It looks like we’re turning. Gonna just orient so we’ll be pulling up._ ”

He spins, and Adora and Glimmer fall in.

“ _Hope? Are you there?_ ” Adora asks.

Between them, the blue hologram of the androgynous child manifests, oriented the same way as them. “`Yes.`”

“ _It seems the shaft is veering off from vertical up ahead,_ ” Adora says.

Hope looks for a moment. “`Oh. This is unfortunate.`”

“ _Care to explain._ ”

“`The Heart has activated an innate defense mechanism. It has turned the Lower Sphere into a nigh-impassable labyrinth.`”

“ _So how do we get to it?!_ ” Glimmer asks.

“`The labyrinth warps space such that the shortest path is through. Were it not so, it would be trivially easy to side-step it.`”

“ _How does that make any sense?_ ” Bow asks.

“ _I think I get it,_ ” Glimmer says. “ _There’s something weird going on, I can feel it._ ”

“ _How much longer is it going to take?_ ” Adora asks Hope.

“`Unclear. The maximum possible distance should like within the ten thousand-mile range, although it is likely the Heart is utilizing some of that distance in a branching fashion. Beware: the unreality field you are about to enter can reify hallucinations.`”

“ _What does that mean?_ ” Bow asks.

“`Adora is familiar with the phenomenon. I subjected her to it in a past life.`”

“ _You did? I though it happened on its own?_ ”

“`I specifically chose to reify shared memories of yourself and Catra so as to create discord between the two of you. I apologize; I was acting according to my directives.`”

Adora doesn’t say anything to that. Glimmer glances at her.

“`There is some good news; I will be able to guide you, at least to an extent. I can help keep you from pursuing dead ends and warn you of hazards. I still have access to the subsystems that inspect the Heart's activities.`”

“ _Thanks, Hope,_ ” Bow says. “ _That sounds great. All right, we’re going to pull up soon; eyes open everyone._ ”


	20. Abolition, Part 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cw: battle violence

Frosta speeds through the trenches on the skates built into her power suit’s extended legs; and using her reactionless thruster pack for aiding in the sharp turns. Behind her, her two buddy-bots in identical suits keep watch behind and above.

One of her two Toha cannons in her right arm malfunctioned during her escape.

A mile behind her, Perfuma is making a stand, exhaling billowing clouds of corrosive spores and horrifically toxic pollen, spawning hydrogen-balloon critters and tearing a bloody trail through the advancing army of clones.

In Frosta’s left-side pocket compartment is a fat seed — Perfuma’s ‘bug out’ option. When she’s reached safety, Frosta’s supposed to bring it out of dormancy with gentle heat.

Three hulking figures appear on the lip of the trench, up ahead at the T-junction. Triple-clones.

Frosta super-heats the air around them to a dull cherry glow — while this doesn’t kill them outright, it is one of the things they can’t just become immune to: extreme heat, sufficiently sharp blades, or sufficiently hard impacts. Anything that would destroy a rock is fair game. Anything with a highly specific magical or energetic signature; anything relying on disrupting the intricacies of biology they can adapt to counter

Including occasionally, being frozen solid. That little trick only works half the time.

They cough and hack in the smouldering air, but still take off, heading for her. She stops, and aims her own and her two bots’ weapons at them, opening fire. Faintly glowing beams of gravitational energy tear two-inch-wide holes through the clone’s flesh, and the heat boils and then ignites the sprays of blood, and cauterizes the wounds.

The first one tumbles to the ground halfway to her, long before it can become immune to her weapon, and Frosta focuses fire on the second. Her second gun in her right hand malfunctions too.

The third manages to reach her unscathed, claws outstretched.

One of her bots leaps directly into its arms, extending its wrist blades, and impaling it with twin monomolecular blades. Four clawed hands sink into its armor like it was nothing, rending the systems contained underneath and piercing the user compartment; tearing handfuls of machinery out.

Frosta and her other buddy keep up their fire, and the clone stops fighting within seconds, but not before the damage is done. The buddy-bot and its suit are both totalled.

Better it than her.

She bends down to the unscathed right arm, and pops open the access panel for the weapons mount. With the twist of two pins, she detaches the dual Toha cannon configuration from its hefty dovetail mount, and then goes to do the same with her own right arm.

Revealing her own malfunctioning weapons unit, a cloud of ominous ‘magic smoke’ escapes. It’s one of Rogelio’s jokes: inside every device is a cloud of magic smoke making it work, and once it escapes, the device no longer works.

She detaches and discards the useless weapon, installing the spare, and then continues.

Only having one buddy-bot feels like she’s missing an extra limb.

* * *

Six flares hang in the sky above, casting a cold glow in the dark and giving everything six shadows.

Bullets rip into Mermista’s water-bubble, stopping dead barely an inch inside.

In retaliation she punts a hundred-pound chunk of stone down the trench, obliterating the advancing squad of clones.

“Good one,” Catra says, covering the other direction of the trench. Two triple clones are lying further up, clawing at their wounds as they slowly turn into ash.

“ _Cometa here! Coming to you! Scorpia’s down!_ ”

“What?!” Catra exclaims. “Did you find whatever’s blocking portals?”

“ _No. Maybe._ ”

Thundering footsteps sound in the distance, and Catra leaps onto the parapet, to look over the barren land. Cometa’s colossus comes in at a dead sprint. On its shoulder, holding on for dear life, sits King Micah. Held in one hand is Scorpia.

She screeches to a halt, carving up the rocky ground and coming to a stop just before Catra.

Four triple-clones swoop in behind her, and Catra draws a Horde automatic rifle, opening fire at them with her darkness-infused bullets. They reach Cometa before she can down more than one — while she can kill them with a single bullet, they remain dangerous for at least a _while_ before that happens.

Cometa throws a punch and her free arm turns into a spike, pistoning out and impaling one of the clones; and as it does, the grotesque creature is ripped apart from inside by a sea-urchin-like protrusion of spikes emanating from the initial impaling instrument.

The two other triple-clones rip into Cometa’s mechanic form.

“Mermista!” Cometa calls out and tosses an unconscious Scorpia in her direction. Mermista leaps out of the trench and gently catches Scorpia by her body’s water, landing her in a cushion of her anti-freeze solution.

Micah just jumps directly off Cometa’s shoulder, floating gracefully through the air and landing lightly on the other side of the trench.

“There’s too many of them out there; their mages are using misdirections!” he barks.

“Get underground!” Catra orders.

Before he does, he looks down the trench they are guarding and casually fills it with liquid magic fire, immolating an advancing squad seeking to take advantage of the distraction.

“Frosta? How far are you?” Mermista calls out on the open channel.

“ _I can see Cometa! Maybe eight hundred yards!_ ”

Catra dismisses her automatic rifle in favor of a water-cooled machine gun — the only thing that can really sustain the kind of fire she is about to put out — fed by a prodigiously long belt of disintegrating links. Her darkness flow into the large-caliber bullets, and she opens fire, shouldering the seventy-pound weapon like a rifle.

Cometa is still swatting at the two remaining triple-clones, which nimbly dance around her remarkably quick blows; bullets impact the colossus from time to time to little effect.

Taking careful aim, Catra opens fire and drops both of the triple-clones. “Get out of that thing, and get underground!” she yells to Cometa. “Kyle, Damara, _anyone_ , we could _really_ use some support fire right about now!”

An orange beam comes out of the sky sweeping across the landscape, cutting a narrow swath of the advancing army of clones. It’s not going to work.

Cometa ejects from a slot in the back of the colossus, and the entire thing liquefies. She heads down into the trench and into the dugout leading to the chambers below and the tunnel into the Horde complex. Mermista follows her with Scorpia.

Catra hops back into the trench for cover, as the bullets begin flying — she’s the only available target, and her luck will only last so long. “Frosta? It’s just me and you now!”

“ _It’ll be faster to cross over, cand you cover me?_ ”

Catra smirks. Beside her, all twelve of her blackguards step out of her shadow, armed with modified Yala-model auto cannons. They all open fire on the approaching Horde forces.

Frosta pops out of a trench three hundred yards off, followed by a single buddy-bot, and races across the barren open ground. They start firing at her, despite Catra’s efforts to cover them. A shell strikes ground, missing by a hefty margin. The heavy armor of the girl’s suit protects her adequately from the onslaught and within moments she leaps into the trench by Catra.

“Inside! Now!”

Frosta doesn’t need to be told twice, and runs inside.

Catra dematerializes her blackguards, and pulls one of her largest weapons out: two hundred pounds of explosives on a pallet, surrounded by another two hundred pounds of sandbags filled with one-inch steel bearings.

She sets the timer and ducks underground, heading down the spiral stairs at a dead run. In the bunker underneath, Huntara is waiting.

“That’s everyone?” Huntara asks

“Yeah, blow it!”

Huntara reaches out and hammers a hand into the rock wall. The spiral staircase wrought from the stone itself closes up like it was never there.

The timer in Catra’s visor runs out. There’s no distant rumble as her bomb goes off up above, not under this much rock.

“Where’s the flower girl?” Huntara asks.

“Oh!” Frosta exclaims, and opens the pocket compartment on her thigh, taking out the large seed. With an infusion of warmth, it comes alive, and immediately begins unfolding and growing into a mass of vines that join up and form a humanoid figure. Then the bark turns to tan skin, and Perfuma opens her eyes. “Ow.”

“Sorry it took me so long,” Frosta says, flipping up her visor.

“Don’t worry about it,” Perfuma says. She looks down herself — nude — and conjures an outfit of oversized flower petals. Then she looks around and spots Scorpia on the floor. Her serene demeanor shatters and she hurries over.

Cometa is already sitting on the stone floor, next to Scorpia. “She’s not hurt,” she says, “at least I don’t think she is. I think it’s power over-use. She finally found her limit.”

“If it is, I might be able to help,” Catra says and steps forward, kneeling down. Scorpia’s definitely alive and breathing. Catra flips up the visor and put a hand on Scorpia’s forehead.

  
_Are you awake in there?_  


She gets some psychic pushback. Frustration. Fear. Anger.

  
_Calm down, you’re safe._  


“I think she’s paralyzed, not unconscious,” Catra says. “Let me try something.”

She puts a hand on Scorpia’s sternum, and channels her darkness. It is purely imitating Adora and hoping for the best; hoping her darkness can undo whatever effect it is a Runestone punishes its Wielders with.

“Ow,” Scorpia mutters.

“Oh hey, it worked!” Catra says.

Scorpia turns her head to look at Perfuma. “Hey Perfect. Sorry, again.”

Catra stands. “We should get moving, through the tunnel. Scorpia?”

Scorpia holds up a hand and Perfuma helps her to her feet, shaky.

“Yeah, what Catra said. Let’s go join up with first and second.”

* * *

“`Damara, I have a problem I don't know how to handle.`”

Damara has to bring her focus forcibly back to the control center on the Swift Wind. At this point she’s not controlling her drone swarm; she _is_ the drone swarm. It is dissociating and disorienting, but at the same time endows her with a feeling of godlike power. She is laying waste to the Horde air forces using a force less than one fifth their size.

“What’s wrong?”

“`A large craft and several smaller ones are approaching the orbital space above the Sourthern Reach, only they aren't orbiting. It is in a controlled descent. Powered hover.`”

Damara directs one of her drones to go stratospheric, and turns its high-definition rangefinder cameras skywards. It’s no telescope, but she can see it. Blue streaks of fusion exhaust plumes.

“Yeah?”

“`I have tried employing self-propelled missiles against it, but their point-defense systems outmatch my arsenal.`”

“Inform the General. Keep me appraised of the situation.”

“`Yes.`”

Under maximum zoom, Damara can make out the largest craft. A squat cylindrical one. The Iron Fist.

* * *

The shaft becomes a tunnel. It’s a very gradual transition from one to the other, and then the floor flattens out and the cross section becomes semicircular. It is still lit as if the very air is the source of light, and the air is fresh and breathable.

They land to take stock.

The tunnel stretches on for _ever._

“My visor’s got nothing,” Bow notes.

“I don’t believe this,” Glimmer mutters.

“What?”

“I can blink to the other side of Etheria; I can _sense_ the other side of— of an entire _planet_ with my Runestone… I can’t feel the end of that tunnel.”

Adora calls Halcyon, turning it into a tripod-mounted range finder. Looking through the aperture at maximum magnification, she targets the end of the tunnel, and the gauge display maxes out.

“This shouldn’t be possible,” Adora notes. “This tunnel is longer than… How far away is the green moon, Bow?”

“Four and a half million miles,” Bow answers immediately. “Give or take.”

“Okay, this rangefinder only goes out to a million, but still.”

“We’ll never make it in time,” Glimmer says.

“Let’s get moving anyway,” Adora says. “We’ll brainstorm on the way; it has to be an illusion or portals, or a trick of the unreality field or _something._ ”

Halcyon morphs into a door-less open-roof terrain-buggy with sleek curves and high suspension with individually articulated wheels. Adora hops up on the drivers seat, Bow takes shotgun, and Glimmer lifts herself into the truck bed with a beat of her wings.

“Well, let’s go!” Bow says optimistically.

“Shit, wait,” Adora says and adjusts her seat _way_ back. “There!”

There’s no engine noise apart from a smooth hum, as they drive off.

* * *

Somehow Catra is once again roped into the chain of command. She’s not even ranked in the Resistance military; but here they are.

The third infantry division has begun relieving the first, and they have secured a sizable section of the underground structures and tunnels, barricading themselves by conventional means as well as with the help of Huntara to collapse tunnels, and Mermista and Frosta to block them off with ice.

It’s a meeting of the colonels, and Scorpia has dragged Catra along.

Lonnie is attending in hologram from the Resistance headquarters, Colonel Neil from out at sea, Kyle from the artillery hall, and Damara from the Swift Wind — wherever it may be, undetectable.

“Let’s start with some bad news,” Colonel Juliet says. “First division has tallied casualties; we’ve almost a hundred. At least forty dead. We’ve lost over thrice that in buddy-bots, however, and we’re already resupplying. I’ll declare the buddy-bot doctrine a tentative success.”

Considering a division of a thousand, and the enormity of the battles ahead, that is grave losses.

“The Sorcery corps has lost eleven; six dead,” Micah notes.

“Second division has lost thirty-two, eight dead,” Colonel Cobalt says.

Third division has seen no active combat and _thankfully_ nobody has seen fit to fall on their bayonets out of soldiery stupidity under Colonel Nightshade. Yet.

“ _We’re back up with nineteen out of twenty guns,_ ” Kyle reports, “ _and we’re all working in Hazard suits. I’ve adjusted our firing protocols so there shouldn’t be any more casualties from counter-battery fire._ ”

“ _All is calm out to sea,_ ” Neil notes. Her years as the commandant of the Northumbra base in the Northern Reach has taught her pragmatism and to never to wish for anything but calm seas.

“We’re mostly at full fighting strength,” Scorpia says. “But we need rest. Especially Huntara, and myself. We have also made progress on the secondary objective; by our last count, we’ve disabled half the drilling wells that pose the greatest threat; the majority of those thanks to Catra.”

“ _We have a troubling development,_ ” Damara says. " _Hope and I think we’ve deduced the intent of the Horde’s space maneuvering. They seem to be establishing a daisy-chain of craft, creating a corridor of portal wards under heavy point defense. Essentially Hope’s weapons are ineffective against it — she even tried orbiting munitions on collision course with stationary Horde craft._

“ _The Iron Fist is the lowest link in the chain, hovering at the edge of the atmosphere, and is capable of both large-scale teleportation-based troop movement, and orbital bombardment. Through this corridor, they will be able to send in reinforcements._ ”

Damara slumps. “ _I’m calling for an open discussion. I’m fresh out of ideas; fighting the Horde’s terrestrial air force is already reaching the limits of my swarm’s capabilities, any more pressure and I might start losing air superiority._ ”

“ _So what I’m getting is things could be worse,_ ” General Lonnie notes. “ _Let’s hear it. Any ideas what we can do about the new supply route?_ ”

“ _Well, the artillery could with minor recalibrations fire through portals in space,_ ” Kyle muses. “ _They aren’t quite powerful enough to qualify as anti-spacecraft, and we’d be risking counter-battery laser fire, which would limit our enenergy-deposition-on-target._ ”

“ _That’s an actionable plan. I want a report on it ASAP,_ ” Lonnie says.

“I’ll do it,” Catra says.

All eyes turn to her.

“ _Come again, please?_ ”

“I said I’ll do it. I _can_ do it. There’s what, a few hundred craft inside geosynchronous orbit? She-Ra took on eleven thousand of them on the back of a bird, throwing _spears_ and killed three hundred. I’m not going to attempt to draw fire, and I’m about as powerful as she is.”

“How are you planning to approach?” Micah asks.

“I’ll step through the shadows,” Catra replies. “It’s easy enough. And Damara, you said they’re _hovering_ right? So if their engines are disabled, they’ll _fall._ ”

“ _Correct._ ”

“Then I’m just going to sneak aboard every single one and plant a bomb. It’s that easy.”

There’s a moment of silence.

“ _Okay, any other things we can do concurrently with that?_ ”

* * *

“There it is,” Sweet Bee says, pointing at the cresting crater lip in the distance. “I can feel it all the way from here.”

“I can’t believe we just walked all the way to the Hive Engine,” Wrodak says. “I’m not ungrateful, I just cannot shake the feeling we might be about to loose our luck.”

“Well, the next hurdle will be to get inside,” Hordak says, “but I might have a way that does not involve us attempting to gain ingress under disguise. Instead we will likely alert whatever resident sorcerers are keeping this place under ward.”

“Oh that’s easy to avoid,” Entrapta says. “The wardbreaker-class spell you’re talking about using is the short-window one, right?”

“Yes?”

“So, that can be cast remotely. We’ll simply contact Colonel Micah and request that it be cast in, say a thirty randomly selected places across the base, and at the same time Hope can do a volume mapping of the entire Horde base. Our ingress will be lost in the noise.”

The four of them share a round of looks. It can’t be that simple, can it?

“I’ll contact command and get authorization,” Sweet Bee says.

* * *

The Runestone corps is holed up in some nondescript room fitted for accommodations. Bunk beds fit for seven-foot-tall clones. Cometa has shorn off the middle bunks so the bottom ones make for comfortable sitting.

“Catra, are you sure about this?” Frosta asks. “I’ve _seen_ you overuse your power. You _will_ be killed.”

“Thanks for the concern,” Catra says. “I’ve learnt to economize.”

“Wildcat,” Scorpia says.

Catra bristles.

“This isn’t some blaze of glory for you, is it?”

Catra spins to face Scorpia, glaring. Scorpia flinches, but remains steadfast. She hands her helmet to Perfuma.

“I mean, I get it. I’ve known for a while. A long while; even when we were together in the Horde, though I didn’t want to realize it then. You love her. Adora.”

Catra takes a deep breath. “Yeah. I always have. What of it.”

“She’s gone down to the Heart of the planet to die. She announced it to everyone in the same breath as saying you had run off. I _know_ you, Catra… Really well.”

Scorpia steps forward.

“You’re grieving. You were like this too when you found out Shadow Weaver had defected.”

Catra swallows. She looks around at the others. Her comrades. Friends, even.

“Krytis will never be avenged if I die before Horde Prime,” Catra says, then.

Scorpia looks around the room, at Spinnerella, and Mermista, who both knowingly meet her eyes. They all feel a thirst for vengeance to some degree.

“All right. Take care, Wildcat. She-Ra is nigh invincible. But from what I can tell, Melog is just lucky. And Prime only has to get lucky once. We can’t win this if we lose both She-Ra and Melog.”

* * *

Catra stands on the blasted ice-shelf that covers the open ocean over the south pole. Directly in the sky above is the blue artificial star of the Iron Fist’s fusion engine exhaust; and around it a constellation of the other craft.

Out there, in the barren wilderness, two hundred drilling wells lie in ruins, blown up over the course of the last half-hour. The two hundred most promising ones, anyway. There isn’t time for anything else.

The cold wind sweeps over her bare fur, and the ice remains steady under the paw pads on her feet, but she doesn’t feel it.

Melog murmurs beside her.

“Yeah, yeah, I’ll be careful.”

They bump their head against Catra’s calf.

“I promise. I’ll grieve. And then one day, maybe… Maybe I’ll do something else. Help recolonize Krytis. Train the next incarnation of She-Ra. Something.”

Melog leaps into her arms, and she pets them for a spell; then they dissolve into darkness, and Catra resumes looking up. She closes her eyes and feels the darkness between the stars.

Inky blackness envelops her like a protective film, and then in a trick of the light, she is gone, transported a hundred miles straight up, standing on top of the Iron Fist; a massive white expanse under her feet, littered with turret ports.

But that is too hard a nut to crack. She looks up further, at the daisy chain of interceptors reaching thousands of miles into the sky.

Stepping through the shadows, she emerges invisible in the engineering compartment of the first one. Low ceilings, cramped quarters, plumbing and wiring covering every wall and all of the ‘ceiling.’ Underfoot is grates hastily placed on top of more wiring and plumbing. Tall vertical shafts are fitted with ladders.

Interceptors were never designed with gravity in mind.

Two clones are there monitoring the performance of the fusion engine from consoles.

Catra, invisible, takes out a bar of explosive with a timer fuze, and adjusts it generously against the watch in her visor to give herself half an hour to complete the operation. She stows it under some wiring in a corner; completely inconspicuous.

Then she steps into the shadows and onto the outside of the craft, scanning the sky for the next target up. Hope has estimated there to be about a thousand ships making up the daisy chain. Catra just needs to disable a few dozen to destabilize the stretched-out anti-portal ward and allow Hope to wreak havoc once more.

Her next sabotages go off flawlessly in much the same way: entering the interceptor craft, stowing away a time bomb, and moving on to the next.

Thirty-one planted bombs later — and with several hundred more in her bag of tricks still — she is halfway up the chain.

Looking up, she sees a bright blue star up above.

“Hope?”

“`Yes, Catra?`”

“What is that big one up near the top?”

“`That would be the Velvet Glove.`”

“Shit.”

“`Is something the matter?`”

“Yeah; Prime parked his flagship there. That _means_ something to that pompous oaf.”

“`I am not sure I follow.`”

“I’m going to pay him a visit.”

Twenty-two sabotages and another ten minutes later, Catra can make out the Velvet Glove if she squints through the maximum magnification her visor permits.

* * *

He sits his throne indisputable in his indefectibility. The throne rooms has been refurbished to this new end; himself being a center-piece of an amalgamation of Etherian magic, ansible communication equipment, and his own person.

The tubes adorning his skull have been freed from their end-caps and now hang suspended from his head, connected to tubes and wires connecting him to this control interface.

Attending to all of this is his many hands. Sorcerers and technicians. To conquer the universe requires pragmatism; victories immemorial have come to him by willingness to adopt the weapons of the enemy and turn it against them.

Etherians and their precious magic is no exception.  


“What are you getting dressed up for, Prime?”

Prime turns his head as much as he can, and out the corner of his eye catches a glimpse of a familiar figure.

Catra.

“Security, please kill this interloper,” Prime says.

“Spare your breath; I’m not even here physically,” Catra says. “This is just a projection.”

Prime does not grimace.

“Doesn’t feel so good when people invade your mental privacy, does it?”

“What do you want, little sister?”

A few of the clones look up to see who their big brother is talking to, but as is right and proper, they wonder silently.

Catra brushes a hand against the hanging cables, causing them to sway. “What’s your plan, here?”

“That is for me to know and for you to find out. I could ask the same of you; this is not an attempt to gather intelligence, except perhaps obliquely. You are stalling.”

Catra shrugs. “I have a fission bomb. I could blow up the Velvet Glove. Do you have any spares?”

“Yes. You may recall the one your friends blew up the aft half of. It has been restored.”

“Drat.”

“You’re not going to win this,” Catra states.

“I’ve lost many a battle, but wars lost I can count on one hand. My victories are more numerous than the breaths you have drawn to this date, little sister.”

“But you’ve never lost thirty percent of your space fleet, have you?”

“I’ve suffered worse losses. Even this will be restored in a few months time. And that is why I win, little sister.”

Catra looks at him.

“I am _eternal._ My war machine is _vast._ And the economy supplying it is larger than any planet.”

“Well, _eternal,_ when my blade finds your throat, I’ll be sure to extend an offer of armistice to your war machine.”

Prime smiles. “I commend you for your wit, little sister. However… You are too late.”

“Am I now?” Catra says, smiling, as the timer in her visor runs out.

“Your little ploy to sabotage my corridor of safe passage through your planetary defense system has failed.”

Catra freezes.

“My brethren can smell it, you know. You reek of it. Explosives. It was a simple matter to locate your little bombs and jettison them. And now, the corridor will serve its purpose.”

On the great screen behind the throne, showing an exterior view of Etheria curving away below, a streak passes by. Something large and _fast._

* * *

Catra is back on the outside of the Velvet Glove, perched on the eight rotating ring. Looking down, she sees her quarry. Grey silhouette; white-speckled hull.

“Hope! What’s that?!”

“`A craft; unknown model and purpose. It is on a free-fall trajectory, I theorize it will perform a suicide burn before impacting the atmosphere and facilitate landing as expediently as possible.`”

A three-dimensional sketch shows up on Catra’s visor. It is long, conical, and with a very clear business end. It’s not a long leap to conclude it is some kind of gigantic drill.

Darkness flows around her, and she assumes the form of Melog’s beastly form, coils up like a spring, and rockets downwards after it.

Then a ring of blue light adorns the drill craft, and it begins _accelerating down._

Then; further, as it passes an interceptor, a few hundred miles below the Velvet Glove, that interceptor’s fusion drive loses containment, resulting in a spectacular blast that comes far too close to vaporizing Catra — well, dozens of miles, but still, this is a _nuclear explosion._

It forces her off course, outside the daisy-chain; lest another interceptor be sacrificed to kill her. Still, she is almost matching pace with the drill. She calls on the darkness to accelerate her fall quicker.

And then, there in free space, little green flashes of teleportation begin forming ahead of her.

A debris field forms; made of inch-sized ball bearings. Catra is already reaching bullet-speeds in her descent.

_This is his version of orbital murder-holes._

But this is no impediment. Here in the darkness of space, any place is as good as any other. In the distance, she sees the drill and her own velocities line up, and Catra shadow steps directly onto the exterior of the drill craft.

Only to find the white specks she saw on it was not hull features.

Surrounding her is hundreds of triple-clones.

* * *

It’s mind-numbing. Fortunately, whatever this car that Halcyon conjured up is, it emits a little beep and a flash of light when Adora starts dozing off — not that she’s tired, but the scenery hasn’t changed for the last three hours of driving at fifty miles per hour.

“Vegetable, Animal, or Mineral?” Glimmer asks.

“Hm… Vegetable,” Bow says.

“Damn, I’m not good with botany. Is it something I’ve seen?”

“Yes.”

“Is it edible.”

Bow snorts. “Conventionally, no.”

“Wait; just so you’re not being tricky, is it a plant?”

Bow remains silent for a moment. “I’m gonna go ahead and say yes.”

“You’re being cagey.”

“That’s not a question.”

“Is it bigger than a breadbox?”

“Yes.”

“Is it… Found in the Whispering Woods?”

“Yes.”

Glimmer ponders this for a moment. “Is it — what’s the word for something that doesn’t move — sessile?”

“No.”

“Is it one of Perfuma’s plant monsters?”

“No.”

“What?! What other non-sessile plants even exist!?” Glimmer exclaims.

Bow smiles.

“ _Oh!_ Is it Perfuma?”

“Yes.”

Glimmer giggles. “Oh you dirty man, ‘conventionally, no,’ as _if!_ ”

“Would you be willing to believe I was thinking of cannibalism?”

“Never in a million years.”

“All right. Vegetable, Animal, or Mineral?” Bow asks.

Glimmer perks up. “Wait! Up ahead!”

She points. “Well, it’s like, a few miles off, but I just felt the wall _shift!_ ”

Adora steps on the brakes. Halcyon dematerializes, gently depositing the three of them on the ground. “Blink us.”

Glimmer puts a hand on Bow and Adora’s shoulders and in a puff of light they arrive in front of an opening in the side of the tunnel. It is pitch black.

“Hope?” Adora tries.

No answer.

Parabell manifests in her hand and Stella Nova on her other arm. “I’m just going to take a quick look, see if it is safe. Stay put.”

“Adora, what if it’s a trap?” Glimmer says.

Adora looks at her. “That’s why I’m going in. I’m basically invulnerable.”

“What if it’s a trap made to separate us?” Bow asks.

Adora looks at him. “We have tracking spells and the _Runestone of Space._ And besides if this place decides to screw with us, or kill us, there’s not a lot we _can_ do. It is a universe-killing weapon after all.”

With that, Adora turns and heads into the darkness.

She proceeds by starlight alone, but it does nothing to illuminate her surroundings.

And then the darkness recedes; there’s a cloaked figure up ahead in the corridor. She throws back her cloak revealing jet black hair, greying at the temples.

Catra turns to her.

“Hey, Adora.”


	21. Abolition, Part 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cw: alcoholism

Adora’s breath catches in her throat.

“Catra, y— you came?”

Somewhere distantly behind her, Bow calls her name.

Catra turns to her fully, and here in this blue-walled corridor built either by her distant ancestors or the magical weapon, she’s the most beautiful thing Adora has ever seen.

Catra smiles and takes a step forward, and with every stride, the whole world shifts sideways.

* * *

The orphanage dormitory is dimly lit, and smells musty in a way that would later turn out to be mold and get the whole place shut down.

There’s a little feliform girl, about Adora’s age, with blue-grey hair and brown-on-orange stripes.

* * *

In the military academy mess hall, everything always smells like meatloaf.

Catra is her best friend.

* * *

The graduation ceremony is held under the open summer-night sky.

Catra clutches her diploma, and walks with a grin, and a spring in her step.

* * *

It’s a rainy day, the obstacle track is a puddle of mud, they’re both dirty in places they never even thought they could be.

The puddles splash around her boots as Catra trudges up to her.

* * *

That sleeping hall in the barracks was home to them for over a year. They carved their faces into the bedpost of Adora’s bunk.

The standard-issue underwear is designed for utility, but it has a certain charm on Catra as she walks up to Adora, tail swinging.

* * *

The air is full of impending violence, on that little dirt road leading to Thaymor.

This is the first time Adora comes to see the Horde uniform as ‘enemy,’ and Catra is in it, but there’s no hint of battle in her face, just a caring smile.

* * *

The crystal palace is dead now, repurposed, and then conquered by Prime. But it wasn’t then. Then it was full of dread and wonder.

And it was the first time in a long while they had time to talk.

* * *

Adora wasn’t herself, as she walked through that ship in frigid waters, blood on her hands.

She nearly killed Catra. This is clearly a fabrication.

* * *

Catra might very well have stayed in that desert, and then nobody would have died.

The sand crunches under her bare feet.

* * *

And Adora is even her old self; average of stature, thin and wiry of build. Catra is her old self, lithe and agile. Somehow they are both there, in Salineas, Horde banners flying overhead. Even here, at the height of their enmity, after Catra nearly destroyed the world out of Spite; after she rendered homeless Adora’s good friend.

The general uniform is very dashing on her.

* * *

The last time she was her old self, was there in Prime’s throne room. Still her heart skipped a beat as she saw Catra.

Metal claws strike metal floors with each step.

* * *

It was a beautiful day, the first day the sun broke the clouds on Krytis. She was so small compared to Adora.

She ought to thank Entrapta for that red power-suit — Bow was right about those ears.

* * *

On the Swift Wind, as Catra had her own growing pains. It is something that grows over time, a true friendship. There, in that dojo, they made up for lost time, and it blossomed into an unspoken love.

That ugly onesie, that she somehow made work, and the renewed vigor in her every movement; it was a joy to just be near her.

* * *

Catra stops, eye-to-eye with Adora, shiny yellow and brilliant blue, clad in that mish-mash of clothing pieces that come together into _almost_ a body suit; with all those little enticing gaps and windows between them — that _had_ to be on purpose.

She reaches out and touches Adora’s face, Adora leans into the touch; oh how she missed it. She wants to cry. To bawl her eyes out.

Adora is afraid, and desperately she needs an outlet for that fear. Glimmer and Bow are her best friends in the whole world, but Catra… She knows why Catra is different, in this moment.

Glimmer and Bow, and everyone else; every mentor figure; even her own mother, has only ever known her as the wielder of She-Ra’s might. Indomitable, indisputable, savior, hero.

And when she destroyed the Aegis and lost She-Ra, she knew they might reject her. They didn’t; but that anxiety never went away.

But Catra loved her for just Adora. Exceptional and clever to be sure, but _mortal,_ and destiny notwithstanding, just like everybody else.

“Catra, I—”

And then Catra pops like a soap bubble.

The discrepancies of the vision resolve itself with her cognitive dissonance, into crushing disappointment.

“Adora?”

Adora turns to see Bow and Glimmer, following after her.

Glimmer flips her visor up. “Are you okay, Adora?”

Adora shakes her head, and wipes her eyes. “No. But I don’t have to be. I just have to get to the Heart.”

She turns to look down the corridor. There’s light at the other end. “Let’s go.”

Then Glimmer’s arms wrap around her waist, stopping her. She looks down, to see Glimmer fiercely hugging her.

Bow joins in, wrapping his arms around her as well.

“We’ll help you get through this,” he says.

* * *

At the other end of the tunnel, they step out into the Whispering Woods. The hilly terrain, the blue hues of the vegetation, and the fresh scent of flowers.

“This can’t be right,” Bow says.

Adora looks around. This all feels so very familiar. “It’s like a dream,” she says. “It’s not quite like the portal, but I think — I don’t think it’s merely reading our memories and using them against us, like Light Hope did. I think it is responding to us.”

“The sky isn’t broken,” Glimmer notes, pointing up at the twilight.

“Let’s go to the Crystal Castle,” Adora says. “I’m playing this by ear, but maybe _just_ maybe, we can get a hold of Hope from there?”

“Well it’s nearby,” Bow says, and points. “Because the Hidden Library is right there.”

“I don’t think we have time for a social visit,” Adora notes.

Bow’s gaze lingers on his childhood home. He misses it. “Yeah, no, I know this isn’t real —” he points beyond it “— See? There’s no barracks for the Mystacorian technicians.” Bow reconfigures his skates for terrain. “Anyway, time’s a-wasting.”

They make their way swiftly through the forest.

* * *

Out there, in that little ruined colonnade before the riddle door, if you look for it in the moss-overgrown stone floors, is a little circle, quite like that in the lobby inside the Crystal Castle.

“Hope?” Adora asks.

And thankfully, it flickers to life, inhabited by a blue hologram. “`Hello, Adora.`”

“Oh thank the stars,” Glimmer mutters.

“Hope, what is this place?” Adora ask.

“`It would seem you have side-stepped at least part of the labyrinth. I am unsure how exactly this came to be, but She-Ra has an innate sympathetic connection to the Heart and its magic; even in the absence of the Aegis.`”

Adora looks at Glimmer and Bow, standing on either side of her.

“That’s a good thing, right?” Glimmer asks.

“`Maybe. I am sorry I couldn't get access before. Bringing me here, I shall try to be as useful as I can. The way donw is inside.`” They point at the riddle gate which opens unprompted.

“Thanks, Hope,” Adora says.

“`Now go! Time is of the essence!`”

Bow unfurls his skates, Glimmer takes off, and Adora sets off at a dead run.

Inside they do not find the Crystal Castle. They find the cavern under the sacred spire.

* * *

They swarm her.

In the stage plays, when the hero faces off against the villain’s men, they always politely approach one at a time, so the stage fencing can proceed without danger of injury.

A thousand triple clones head directly for her, running across the hull of the drill craft, using its suicide burn deceleration to provided gravity.

Catra snarls. Her blackguards take up arms with daggers and guns, blades and bullets soaked in darkness. One of them even wields Bane itself.

She has her claws and fangs.

The guns are silent in the vacuum; flashes of light are the only report as bullets tear into the clones, daggers plunge into soft flesh. It is effective, but the fatal decay effect is slow.

Catra herself rends and crushes, dancing to and fro and biting and ripping triple clones into bits, to disintegrate on their own time.

The clones tear into her blackguards’ bodies — First-Ones’ robotics — and her darkness flows into the gaps to un-break them. They rip into Catra when she missteps, with claws that can punch through inch-thick steel armor like tissue paper.

Every injury costs her. Every mote of darkness in a bullet costs her.

She makes her way down the hull, running along the hundreds of feet of spacecraft towards the vulnerable engines, fighting for every foot of progress.

And then she feels it. The chill; the deathly cold of space. Her vision is addled as if she was donned a pair of shaded glasses.

Frosta’s word echo in her mind: _you will be killed._

And then Krytis will never be avenged.

Catra steps backwards into the darkness of space.

Down on the surface, on a hilltop in the center tundra of The Southern Reach, Catra looks skyward in the pitch blackness to see the blue exhaust plume, and white hot re-entry heating of the craft as it comes down.

She shivers and bites down hard to stop her teeth from clattering.

“Hey, everyone, this is Catra. Mission failed, I repeat, mission failed. Prime has sent some kind of specialized ship down. I’ll keep you appraised.”

“ _Are you unhurt?_ ” Scorpia asks.

“I’ve overused my powers, but otherwise, yeah.”

“ _Shit._ ”

The craft enters the lower atmosphere, and starts veering off towards land. It is utterly enormous.

Catra pulls a glider from her bag of tricks and leaps onto it, taking off — she’s nowhere near as good as Bow, but it’ll serve. In the dark arctic night, she shadow steps into the sky.

“ _To whom it may concern,_ ” Damara says, “ _as much as I would like to unload on that thing, I am just now detecting a massive air mobilization from the Horde. I am going to have my hands full._ ”

“ _That’s allright Damara. We’re opening fire,_ ” Kyle says.

Nineteen rays of fire appear in the sky, lacing straight at the quarter-mile tall gliding sideways on a radioactive pillar of fusion-fire, rupturing the thick ice shelf below.

Nineteen spell sigils appear in the air surrounding its hull. Nineteen reflective forcefields unfurl. Nineteen ray cannons have their ordnance reflected harmlessly into the frozen ocean, explosively boiling the ice where they strike.

Then it comes onto land and pivots, coming to a stop, before beginning its descent. Six enormous landing legs extend, and contact the ground like a limp spider.

The three torch engines cut off, and the storm of noise and destruction cuts out, and the six feet crunch into the ice and rock, coming to support the prodigious bulk of the craft.

Catra watches all this from the air.

There’s a moments reprieve as machinery settles and other machinery spins up.

Then the drill activates, and a green beam of destruction starts vaporizing the ice beneath it. It sounds like a continuous thunderclap.

“Peekablue, I need to know everything you can tell me about this,” Catra says.

There’s a pause.

“ _We have half an hour until that thing hits Cthonic infrastructure, then Prime is going to take over the Heart. Difficult to say how long it will then be before he can activate the weapon._ ”

“So that’s his plan. Diamond tipped drill bits were too slow, huh?” Catra mutters to herself.

Above, through the daisy chain, dropships and in-atmo battlecraft start coming down, heading to the drill site no doubt to disgorge an army.

It’s over; that drill is there to stay.

Catra’s shivering now. The cold is getting to her, as is the darkness. Through clattering teeth, she speaks. “Listen, everybody, I need to get out of the cold now; I— someone has to go warn Adora. Prime is going to crack open the— the planet. They’re _down there_ I— I—”

“ _Catra, this is General Lonnie. I think I speak for everyone when I say: Go. Do whatever you have to._ ”

There’s a tear on her cheek, and it freezes to her fur. She pulls the glider into a landing dive. The wind is picking up, and whipping the snow into a blizzard.

She takes out her communicator, and with numb fingers she dials a portal. She rubs her eyes under the half-visor, the screen is blurry.

The portal opens, and a gust of warm air washes over her. Then she steps through, onto the streets of Refuge III.

* * *

The tension is near-unbearable.

Entrapta is by illusion dressed up as a clone technician, in grey coveralls, pushing what looks like a cart full of toolboxes, but which conceals her backpack on a hover carriage. Sweet Bee is disguised as a clone sorcerer — the newest addition to Prime’s ranks — in dark grey robes.

The two bug puppets are disguised as regular acolytes in white robes, while Hordak and Wrodak both are glamoured like soldiers; green visors obscuring their faces.

They head through the raw stone corridors towards the hive engine, under Sweet Bee’s strict instruction to look as if they are following Prime’s orders, and everything is as it is supposed to be.

Reaching an airlock leading to the complex surrounding the hive engine, they are, however, stopped.

“State your business.”

It’s a clone soldier.

In Sweet Bee’s ear, Peekablue dictates her words.

“Brother?” she says in the voice of all clones. “What protocol is this?”

“Basic security. The resistance possesses agents capable of impersonating our brethren.”

“This one assures you, there is no impostors among this group. We have orders to inspect the hive engine carefully for sabotage. The resistance possesses advanced stealth capabilities and the portal warding was compromised just now.”

The clone eyes them.

Then he steps aside, and allows them to pass.

On the other side of the door, the stone walls and floor are replaced by plastic panelling, as they step into an access corridor leading to the hive craft: a structure built on erected pillars, encased in concrete afterwards.

Sweet Bee leads them on, her visor relaying to Peekablue, who in turn guides them in.

The hive engine-carrier, as a spacecraft, has been designed with landing in mind: the corridors inside are all built to allow easy access under gravity. There’s a definite ‘floor.’ The cylindrical hull is split into bulkheads both radially and in sectors, and at each crossing an armed guard is posted — although the doors are open.

“This one has orders to relay,” Sweet Bee says to the first such guard. “All these doors must lock at our passing. We are here on suspicion that resistance elements may be targeting the hive engine. If they are, Prime should want them thoroughly confined, to ease their capture.”

“Of course, brother. A quite reasonable precaution,” the clone soldier says.

“Expect an intercom announcement once we reach the inner sanctum.”

“Good hunting, brother.”

They pass, and the green forcefield comes up.

Relaying the same message to the guards posted at another three gates, they reach the bulkhead from which they can travel inwards. The corridors are much the same as the Velvet Glove, although far more cramped: white-painted metal floors, every surface composed of removable panelling.

But the smell… It smells _organic,_ and the sweet stench only grows as they enter the next radial bulkhead and then the next.

Finally they arrive at the main gate to the central chamber. This one is no green forcefield; this is an armor-plated blast door.

Two guards are posed there.

“Brethren,” Sweet Bee says. “Please permit us inside, we have reason to believe resistance elements might have accessed the inner sanctum.”

“Nonsense,” one of them says.

Sweet Bee looks at him, her disguise betraying no interruption. “This one shall have you know that the portal wards were _interrupted_ and that a large volume of portals were opened. Reason bids the sane to suspect this was a _diversion._ Do you not agree, brother?”

The two clone guards share a glance, and both nod. “This one respects that reasoning.” They both turn around, and using keys kept in lanyards around their necks, unlock the gate.

“Kindly lock the gate behind us, once we are inside so as to not allow any intruders egress,” Sweet Bee says. “And make an announcement to the whole craft to enter lock-down. Any requests for access from the outside should be routed through to the inner sanctum for the members of _this delegation alone,_ to verify. Do you understand?!”

“Perfectly, brother. Good hunting.”

They walk inside, and the heavy doors close behind them. Sweet Bee stops short of the threshold. “Brothers. Your keys, please.”

“That is a violation of protocol.”

“I am _bringing them inside._ Should the two of you suffer an ambush, the resistance will be able to access the inner sanctum. Prime shall be _most_ displeased. This one shall shoulder the whole of the responsibility of this breach of protocol.”

The two clones share another look, then take off their lanyard keys, and hand them over.

Sweet Bee enters, and the blast doors close behind her. Heavy whirring of engines and clattering of hydraulics betray the locking mechanisms engaging.

Inside is a cabinet of horrors.

A hive engine is no mere mechanism, as its name would imply; this is a subtle bit of propaganda. A hive engine is a _mother of wasps._ A gigantic, bloated mass of designer flesh meshed with delicate synthetics and intricate cybernetics. While they might once long ago have resembles insectile breeding queens, this resemblance has long since been engineered away.

It smells _metabolic._ Like waste products and nutritious amniotic fluid.

Plumbing systems that outstrip rocket engines’ turbo pumps in sheer mind-twisting complexity supply the gigantic pseudo-creature with food and disposes of its waste. Hundreds of clear pipes attach to orifices, through which crawl new-born slaver wasps, in an unending stream. Thousands of young per second from a hundred wombs.

And at the center of the whole mess, sits an ansible communications spire; the thing that links Prime’s intellect to his swarm. The weak point Entrapta discovered. The flaw they are about to use to undo Prime.

Their disguises dissolve, and they all take a moment to stare at the fascinating yet revolting display.

“Hm,” Sweet Bee notes.

“What?” Hordak asks her.

“Reminds me of my own efforts.” She nods to her two humanoid insect puppets; grown through her sorcerous means in beeswax-lined jars in damp caves lying on ley-lines.

And then they go to work, frantically.

Entrapta throws open her enormous backpack on its hover cart, and throws a set of welding equipment to Hordak, who promptly goes to work on welding the door shut.

Entrapta begins the process of closing every single armored valve, and air-gapping every data connection that bridges inner sanctum to the outside world, cutting off the hive engine from its life support and vitals monitoring, engaging redundancies inside. Now the clock is ticking.

Wrodak and Sweet Bee begin unpacking the equipment for the ritual.

The whole space is of course under Runestone-suppression, so the first order of business is to disable that. Courtesy of the sorcery corps, a chest high pillar of spindly engraved metal rods serves to gently ease away to suppressor field without alerting anyone.

While that powers up, Wrodak unpacks their equipment; computers, measuring devices, and connectors. Deftly he assembles it, connecting appropriate ports with cables, pipes, and thaumaturgic chains. Using his hover pack, he then begins hooking up the hive engine itself to the little control nexus.

As the suppression abates, Sweet Bee opens a box of bees and unrolls a pad of dye, and using insect feet as paintbrushes, she begins realizing the ritual circle they will need.

Her two dolls set up a machine gun emplacement, facing the blast doors.

* * *

“What is this place?” Adora asks, looking about at the wall-to-wall pink quartz crystals.

“This is the Sacred Cavern, the succession rite of queens takes place here,” Glimmer says. “I was down here when… I don’t even know why I feel so conflicted; my mom is _alive!_ ”

“You said you botched the succession ritual,” Bow notes.

“I did. Let’s go. There’s a monster down here, somewhere.”

They walk down the sloped, winding path, towards the marble cavern at the end, but there’s no ominous presence in hiding.

And as they reach the exit, where quartz gives way to black marble, and the chamber where Glimmer messed up lies ahead, they hear it.

A hiss, over to the side.

There, in the shadows at the transition between rock types, lies a cycloptic, purple snake-like creature.

“Huh,” Glimmer says. “It used to be a lot bigger.”

“It looks… Hurt,” Bow says.

And indeed, across its carapace is steaks of discoloration, in a splatter-pattern.

“I fought it. When I couldn’t figure out what it wanted, and — and because I was so angry I had messed up the ritual, I cast spells at it.”

Glimmer takes a step forward, and the creature recoils.

“Glimmer, we should go,” Adora says.

“Yeah,” Glimmer says. “Sorry, guardian-creature. I could have just blinked past you; I shouldn’t have taken my anger out on you.”

The creature hisses. It doesn’t understand speech; nor even sentiment. Only the duty it has been imbued with, and the pain it is afflicted by.

Glimmer turns and heads down the tunnel.

At the end of it, they emerge into a darkened vehicle hangar, where two rows of five landskiffs sit on their landing legs.

* * *

Refuge III is far less populated than usual; over a third of its people have gone to the front, and the rest are have realized that the end of the world could be nigh, so they are sitting tight, with their loved-ones close by, waiting for news — good or bad.

Catra rubs her arms; not to actually help with the chill, just out of habit. Thankfully she can still _mostly_ see.

She heads into a familiar three-storey apartment block situated in a fairly expansive underground space lined with pillars every two hundred feet or so.

On the first floor, she rings the doorbell.

The door opens, and Clawdia is there.

“Catra? I thought you were down south, fighting.”

“I was; I _am._ Listen; Adora went down into the planet to destroy the Heart, but now Horde Prime is drilling down using this _space_ drill or something, and he’s going to get there, maybe even before Adora can. I— I need to go there and warn her, but I don’t know where she is, and I’ve overused my powers, and I can’t think straight anymore.” Catra breathes heavily; her teeth clatter.

Clawdia gently shushes her. “How much time do we have?”

“Thirty minutes or so before he reaches the cthonic infrastructure — that’s the underground network of machinery — and starts doing as he pleases. After that, who knows how long it’ll take him to get what he wants. Minutes. Hours. Days.”

“Then let’s take one minute to think this over,” Clawdia says. She has no experience with emergencies and war, but she does have experience with freaking out. “Breathe, Catra. Take it easy. Are you cold?”

“That’s Melog’s powers. It happens when I channel too much darkness.”

Clawdia leads her in, and pushes her down to sit on the sofa, then heads into the kitchen and taps boiling water into a cup, adds a heavy tea bag, lets it steep for just a moment, and finally pours a dash of cream to cool it.

She hands Catra the cup of tea. “Now. Take a sip.”

“It won’t help; I’ve tried everything to get warm when I’m like this, the only thing that helps is…”

“What?”

“Adora’s Starlight.”

Clawdia nods. “That does make for two birds with one stone: warn Adora, get your powers fixed, right?”

“I don’t even know how to find her,” Catra says. She sips the tea. It’s delicious.

“Well, then ask for help. Who do you know who does?”

Catra ponders this. “Stupid empty brain,” she mutters. “Uh; Hope does. That’s the personality construct that’s — you know never mind.”

“Okay. How do you find her?”

“I’ll call her up.”

“Okay. Anyone else?”

Catra looks away. “Shadow Weaver could probably help, but—”

“Ah,” Clawdia says. “Well, I think we can discount her.”

Catra looks up. “Why?”

“She’s probably on her sixth drink by now.”

Catra throws her head back and hides her face in her hands. “Fuck. Of course she’d be getting drunk.”

Clawdia gets up, brushing her skirt off, then heads to the coat rack and throws a shawl over her shoulders. “She’s been getting drunk _every day_ since Adora got her thrown out of security council business. I’ve been keeping an eye on her.”

She picks up her shoulder bag. “Shall we go stage an intervention?”

Catra blinks, and futilely rubs her eyes to try to get the shadows away.

* * *

“It’s not going to make much of a difference, General,” Peekablue says.

Lonnie rests her knuckles on the table, staring at the visualization of the Southern Reach. Little green dots represent the Horde presence; little purple dots represent the resistance.

In the center of the small continent lies the hive engine and its enormous underground base complex. Near the southernmost point is the drill. Off to the side of the table, above the southern pole, is the Iron Fist.

The timer is slowly counting down to Peekablue’s estimated deadline.

“How is the infiltration team doing?” she asks him.

“I’ve successfully guided them to gain access to the hive engine. By now they will have barricaded themselves in its chamber and begun the subversion.”

“Are they going to finish before or after Prime gets his hands on our planet?”

“Difficult to say.”

Lonnie nods. “And how long from he does, until he has the Heart?”

“Difficult to say.”

“Then go _find out,_ Prince,” Lonnie says through gritted teeth. “We’re in your ‘inner sanctum,’ are we not?”

Peekablue nods. “Right away, General.” He heads away at a brisk pace, to the other room which is set up with his ‘throne’ of information.

That leaves the two of them. Lonnie sighs.

“I know what it is like to have to consign people you know to an uncertain fate,” Angella says.

“I don’t doubt that your Majesty,” Lonnie says.

“You have an advantage over me, when I was in your position,” Angella says. “Your men are there by choice. Everyone in the resistance army is fighting because they are willing to give up their lives.”

Lonnie scoffs. “Don’t feed me a line, your Majesty. That’s what every propaganda poster says.”

“In this case it is not a line. There is no pay, or promise of prestige in exchange for valor; the hard fact is if we do not fight, we’ll surely perish. ’Tis more akin a struggle for survival than a war of defense, let alone conquest.”

Lonnie looks at her.

“And I was never _chosen_ to lead. These people, you get to command them because they have faith in you; not the other way around. If you hesitate, you fail to honor their trust.”

“Thanks for the pep-talk,” Lonnie says. “But I still have to decide whether to sacrifice my friends on the off chance it can help save the universe.”

“You already know you should, from what I can hear.”

Lonnie looks at the battle map. “Infuriatingly-always-right immortal mentor-figure is a good look for you, your Majesty.”

“Thank you.”

Lonnie touches her earbud. “This is General Lonnie, calling all Colonels. Abandon current objective, in favor of full-scale assault on the drill to commence in _five minutes._ ”

* * *

Shadow Weaver puts down the shot glass, upside down, next to the five others.

“I really wish you wouldn’t do that, ma’am; I’ll have to wipe down the counter,” the bartender says.

Shadow Weaver looks at her; a young satyr. Quite dashing in that waistcoat. “I’m the most powerful sorcerer on _all_ of Etheria, did you know that?”

“You tell me every day, ma’am. And no, I am still not single.”

“Oh well, you are _farh_ too young for me anyway.”

“Well, it seems like your friends are here,” the bartender says, “so I’m going to go stock; call if you need a refill.”

“She doesn’t.”

Shadow Weaver turns to see an unfamiliar feliform woman in purple hues. She look back with contempt.

“Piss off,” Shadow Weaver says. “I’m here to drink _alone._ ”

“No you’re not, Shadow Weaver.”

There’s a strong hand on her shoulder. She looks to its owner, and sees Catra.

“Oh fuck. What have I done _now._ ”

“Nothing. I need your help finding Adora.”

Shadow Weaver stares. Then she smiles, and her scars contort. She stands from the stool, and smoothes her red robe.

“Last _I_ heard, she had gone down in the underworld to…” She makes a flourish. “Set _free_ all the magic of Etheria, from the yoke of the First Ones; denying Prime access to the most powerful weapon ever made.”

“Yeah,” Catra says.

“Well then, it seems to me she is going to become the hero she was always _meant_ to be, and if you are so selfish as to try and _stop_ her—”

Catra grabs her by the throat in an unyielding hand, claws gingerly resting on skin. “ _Enough._ This isn’t about your _messed up powetrip_ any more. Prime just put down a drill the size of a fucking mountain, and we have twenty-five minutes until he hits something important and starts… I don’t know _hacking_ the planet so he can get to the Heart. Adora is _down there_ and she has _no idea._ ”

“ _I can’t breathe,_ ” Shadow Weaver croaks.

Catra lets go, and Shadow Weaver falls to her feet and stumbles, coughing, supporting herself on the bar.

“Are we going to have a problem, lady?” the barkeep asks Catra.

“No, no, I’m just putting my drunkard foster-mother in her place,” Catra says nonchalantly.

“It’s no use,” Shadow Weaver says. “I’m _drunk._ It’ll be at least four hours before I’m fit to cast _any_ spell.”

Catra turns to the bartender. “Do you have an empty bottle?”

The woman ducks under the bar, then hands Catra an empty vodka bottle.

Catra holds it to her lips. “Wanna see a magic trick?”

“What are you—” Shadow Weaver says.

Then Catra puts the bottle to her lips and blows a puff of black smoke into it. She steps past Shadow Weaver to the six shot glasses on the counter, flips them over one by one, and fills them from the empty bottle, clear liquid flowing into them from nowhere. Each shot is lesser than the last, and as she goes they begin to take on cloudy characteristics and smell more chemical than mere vodka.

It takes Shadow Weaver a moment to feel the effect, she shivers and nearly stumbles again. “What in the name of evil did you _do_ to me, Catra?!”

Catra giggles. “Whatever the opposite of getting drunk is. When I’m done with you, you can go drown yourself in alcohol for all I care, but right now, we need to _go._ ”


	22. Abolition, Part 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cw: body horror, surgery, amputation

“What is this place?” Bow asks.

“That’s Horde hovercraft,” Glimmer notes.

“It’s the hangar,” Adora says, heading into the hangar, to the first skiff. “Remember the first time we met? I— I’d just gotten promoted, and I was going to go with… There’s no delicate way to put it, but I was going to assist the artillery in bombarding Thaymor. Probably kill a _lot_ of people. Anyway — Catra wasn’t coming, so I wanted to cheer her up.”

She touches the bow of the small ship-like vehicle. They went away from this design when the Sorcery Division’s manufacturing capacity turned out to be better suited for Runestone suppressors.

“So I used my new rank to requisition one of these, and we went for a joyride by the edge of the woods. Catra took the till; she was terrible at it,” Adora chuckles, and then her mirth evaporates as her words catch up to her. “She flew us into the woods and I fell out, and found Aegis.”

Bow and Glimmer come up to her.

“Then Catra found me and we went back to base; but I couldn’t sleep. So I snuck out and went back to the woods — not on a skiff — and that was when you found me.”

“So… What do we do now?” Glimmer says.

“We go to the forest, and we find the Aegis,” Adora says.

“But we were just _in_ the woods,” Bow says.

“We were in _your_ woods, Bow. And then we went to the crystal castle but it was actually _Glimmer’s_ crystal underground. Now we have to go to _my_ woods, and _my_ Crystal Castle.”

“Then what are we waiting for?” Glimmer asks. “I see a chain hoist on the door, will that open it?”

“Yeah, Bow can you unmoor it? I’ll start the engines,” Adora says.

* * *

Shadow Weaver is an abstinent wreck. They stop by a kiosk down the street, and Clawdia buys a few amenities: caffeine pills, fast-acting non-opioid painkillers, a bottle of water, and breath mints.

Catra eyes the time while Shadow Weaver makes what haste she can.

“If we’re going into the field, shouldn’t I suit up?” She asks, chewing the pills and breath mints together.

“I have a spare in your size with me,” Catra says.

Shadow Weaver washes the bitter, minty dust down with water, looking around. “What you want me to change in an alley?”

“No. Stand still.”

Catra waves a hand and a shadow falls over her like a blanket; then Catra removes it with a flourish, revealing Shadow Weaver in a standard hazard suit.

“That was… Unnerving,” she says dryly.

Catra bites down to prevent her teeth from clattering. Every exertion of her powers costs her a little bit of vision now.

“Well,” Clawdia says, “I think I’ve rendered what help I can. Catra, take care down there. Come back to me.” She reaches up, standing on her toes, and hugs Catra.

“I will, mom.”

Then Clawdia turns to Shadow Weaver. “If you double cross her —”

“I won’t,” Shadow Weaver says.

“Shush! If you double cross her, you can look forward to having every Magicat in the world as an enemy.”

“I _won’t,_ you stupid woman,” Shadow Weaver says, “because if it escaped your notice, Prime is about to _destroy the universe_ and _I_ just so happen to be one of the fools who _live in it._ ”

Clawdia glares at her.

Catra physically equips her portal glove — Bad News — and links into the portal device network, getting them a portal into the woods.

* * *

“General,” Peekablue says, returning to the map table, where Angella and Lonnie are following the troop movements and aerial battle as it proceeds.

He is holding a notepad.

“What is it, Prince?” Lonnie says.

“I’ve spoken to the Cthonic Administrator. Together we estimate that under the full cyber-warfare capabilities of the ansible network, directly commanded by Prime, she _may_ be able to give us ten extra minutes.” He pages through his notes.

“That’s excellent,” Lonnie says.

“Yes. The bad news is; in the worst case scenario, once Prime accesses the Lower Sphere, where the Heart is contained, I foresee that we have a negligible amount of time before he can activate it. Extrapolating from Hope’s telemetry readings — her access to the Lower Sphere is limited at present — the Heart is _intact_ and _fully operational._ It’s currently active emergency security protocols are dependent in large part on the inaccessibility of the interior of the planet, and the physical separation of the Lower Sphere from the Upper.”

Lonnie nods. “Ten extra minutes, then it gets difficult. Okay.”

“There’s more,” Peekablue says, paging. “Even if we destroy the drill, that might not be enough to stop it. If Prime manages to upload his… ‘Data weapons’ — this is Princess Entrapta’s terminology, it’s a little dated — then they might be able to build ansible network nodes _in situ,_ effectively cementing Prime’s grasp on the Cthonic infrastructure.”

“So it’s like an infection. If it takes hold, it becomes systematic,” Lonnie says.

“An apt metaphor. Hope is our immune system, and the Resistance military is our attempt at removing the dirty splinter before it reaches the bloodstream.”

Angella giggles. “A war poet, are we?”

Peekablue makes a little half-bow and a flourish.

He flips another page. “More bad news—”

Lonnie sighs. “Hit me.”

“In case we disable the drill, my personal experience with Prime tells me he will likely resort to orbital bombardment of our forces. We need to evacuate _immediately_ if we succeed. Afterwards… He might try any number of things. Especially considering Sweet Bee and Entrapta might succeed by then.”

Peekablue puts the notepad on the map table. “General, with your permission, I would like to ship out. They need me on the battlefield; proximity helps with my foresight.”

He is already wearing half a hazard suit; only missing the self-attaching modular armor panels.

Lonnie waves her hand in assent.

“Thank you,” Peekablue says. Then he takes out a communicator and orders a portal.

“What about you?” Lonnie asks.

“Oh, I’m rubbish in a fight.”

“I thought you were a Runestone Wielder.”

“A poor excuse for one, and yes, I _were._ My daughter and I decided it would be better if I gave up my share of the Moonstone’s power.”

Lonnie nods. “Let’s hope it helps her, down in the underworld.”

“You?” Angella asks.

“What?”

“Do you wish you were closer to the battle? Leading from the vanguard like the commanders of old?”

Lonnie scoffs.

* * *

“They might have deduced that something is amiss,” Hordak says, peering through a pinhead-sized portal; he has reconfigured the suppression-suppressor to allow for some limited portal-work, undetected. “They’re moving around out there.”

“All right, green across the board, we’re ready to commence!” Entrapta says.

The space has transformed into an even _bigger_ mess of wires, technology, and tubes, than it was when they came in. The hive engine itself has been subjected to careful local anaesthesia and attachment of several invasive probes of self-integrating custom-crafted First-Ones’ cybernetics; there’s a dozen computers, and two-dozen magical artifacts.

Sweet Bee has drawn a hexagonal diagram on the floor, in intricate and impossible detail.

Entrapta takes out a data crystal that looks as if cast from frozen honey, and inserts it. “Virus in place.”

Hordak hurries over to Sweet Bee, who is already removing the right glove of her hazard suit, followed by the armor panels on her arm, and finally rolling up the double-layer soft armor, revealing bare skin up to above the elbow.

“We get one shot at this,” she says to Hordak.

“Relax; I’ve done more involved surgeries with less.” Using a robotic tentacle-arm, he holds her forearm up, and lays a potent nerve-blocking injection, paralyzing and numbing the appendage. Then he tightens a tourniquet and takes out a monomolecular-bladed scalpel.

“Ready?” he asks.

Sweet Bee looks away.

He lays the cuts with a hand guided by intimate knowledge of anatomy, perfectly severing her forearm off at the elbow, gently cutting away ligaments and tendons, preserving all tissues of the upper arm that can be. It bleeds, but not unduly.

Hordak stops midway to clamp and glue the artery, just as a precaution. Then he slices through the elbow joint itself, finally severing the arm.

Wrodak hands him a container of wound-sealing gel; a substance functioning much like self-integrating cybernetics, but without the prosthetic limb.

“How do you feel?” he asks.

“Numb,” Sweet Bee says. She reaches out with her left and takes the bloody, cut-up dismembered arm from him, placing it at the center of the diagram. “Wish we had time to fit me with an artificial hand, though; I could use it.”

Hordak and Wrodak step aside; Hordak takes up position next to Entrapta out of habit.

Sweet Bee puts on the headpiece: a helmet lined fully with intentionality controllers; near ten times as many as the buddy-bot headbands. She takes out a vial of honey, and empties it on her tongue. Then she takes out a vial containing a sanitizing wasp.

The creature is completely in her control. She opens the vial, and it claws out leaping onto her tongue, where she puts it in her cheek, ready. It doesn’t struggle.

“Well,” she says. “I guess this is the point where I tell you this was never about freeing anybody from Prime’s control.”

From behind, the two bug puppets grab Hordak and Wrodak, slapping adhesive paper charms onto their foreheads, and they both fall unconscious immediately.

One of them shoulders a Toha-Zev rifle, and points it at Entrapta.

Entrapta startles. “What are you doing? This wasn’t part of the plan!”

“No. See, in order to free everyone, we agreed I had to take control of Prime’s hive, and _then_ order the wasps to commit suicide. But it struck me, what if I just don’t?”

“Do you really think Prime can’t fight back?”

“Oh, my first order of business will be to simply command every clone to commit suicide. That way he won’t have a host body. _I_ on the other hand, am planning on doing something I have long considered to be possible: transferring my own consciousness _into_ my swarm. Permanently.”

The other bug puppet walks over to the suppressor-suppressor and removes Hordak’s portal-ward-negating add-on, stranding them.

“I’m never going to help you,” Entrapta says. “With one word, I can make all this tech self-destruct. I hate violence, but I’m quite confident I can kill you before I die from getting shot with that weapon you’re pointing at me.”

The bug puppet shifts its aim to Hordak, unconscious on the floor.

“What about your precious Hor-Hor?” Sweet Bee says.

“No!” Entrapta leaps from her post by the control panel, to Hordak’s side, putting herself between the weapon and him — uselessly; a Toha-Zev can shoot through several feet of concrete.

“That’s more like it,” Sweet Bee says. “Now start the ritual.”

Her other puppet takes aim at Wrodak.

Entrapta slumps. Then she reaches over with a tentacle, and dials in the activation code.

Sweet Bee smiles, she crushes the sanitizing wasp in between her molars, and with a mouth full of sweetened filth, begins chanting. Her dismembered arm goes up in green flames.

“ **None of that.** ”

It’s a voice that seems to come from everywhere; and it takes Entrapta and Sweet Bee both to realize it is the _hive engine_ speaking.

Then there’s a green light in the air, surrounding Hordak, and enveloping Entrapta as well. She looks over at Wrodak, then back to Sweet Bee. “Initiate lock-down,” she says.

There’s a flash of green, and the two of them vanish.

Every screen on every device hooked up to the hive engine goes black, showing a caricature of Entrapta, holding up two fingers in a victory-sign, tongue extended; hiding behind a red cross.

Sweet Bee feels the ritual _halt._ Not fizzle. Not stop. _Halt._ Hanging over her head like a sword on a string, dark energies building, and building, and building.

“No!” she shouts.

A green flash appears in mid-air, and a clone soldier manifests. Sweet Bee has him shot immediately. Then her other bug puppet rushes to install the teleportation ward onto the suppressor-suppressor.

Two more soldiers manage to get in, both get shot immediately upon arrival.

Sweet Bee tries the control console, finding it locked by a password.

Sweat starts running down her forehead, and she feels madness creep in. If she does not let the ritual complete, the rebound will kill her. One of her bugs rips the charm off Wrodak, who wakes immediately. “What happened?!” he asks.

“H— hi! Sorry,” Sweet Bee says. “I had to knock you and Hordak out for the start of the ritual — I; Prime noticed us. He teleported H— Hordak away, and Entrapta too. Can you just type in her password?”

Wrodak looks around, then at her. “You betrayed us.”

“What?” Sweet Be laughs nervously. “No I didn’t!”

“Even if I knew her password, you couldn’t get me to reveal it, by any torture.”

Sweet Bee howls in impotent rage, from within the ritual diagram.

Her bug puppet flips its rifle around and strikes Wrodak with the stock, sending him sprawling. Then she starts giggling. “Oh, I don’t have to _torture_ you. I can just _bug_ you.”

The two puppets tackle him, one holding his arms, the other, his visor open. Then a sanitizing wasp comes flying, landing on his cheek.

“You’ve lost this one, Princess,” Wrodak says. “And in doing so, you have doomed the galaxy.”

The wasp crawls inside his nose, and attaches itself. Thirty seconds pass. Sweet Bee lets him go. “Well?”

“Well, nothing,” Wrodak says. “I told you, I don’t know the code.”

Sweet Bee falls to her knees and starts sobbing, as the rebound of her dark ritual slowly rips her sanity to shreds.

* * *

Catra and Shadow Weaver step out into the Whispering Woods, and Catra draws a Yala-Zev, tossing it to Shadow Weaver. A flicker of darkness encompasses her, and she suits up in a heavy suit of armor. A conservative two blackguards appear by her side, armed with Toha-Zev rifles, and Catra herself wields a Yala auto-cannon.

“This is unusually direct, from what I know of your _modus operadi._ ”

“I don’t have time for subtlety,” she replies.

Shadow Weaver runs to keep up with Catra’s jog, and within moments they clear the trees, coming upon Dagon Rock.

A dropship hangs further up, in the process of disgorging units onto the flat top of the rock itself.

Catra relegates the auto-cannon to her tail, and from her bag of tricks, brings the Baryon-Fermion-Gravitron cannon to bear. She aims the huge device from the hip using the targeting screen, and fires the glowing orb into the underbelly of the craft.

The entire hundred-foot vehicle is blown readily in half.

And of course, they get noticed.

Catra dismisses the enormous freaking cannon turns the more modest auto-cannon on the delegation of soldiers guarding the colonnade courtyard, mowing down the clone troops with a hail of holographic bullets the size of crossbow bolts. Her blackguards pick off stragglers.

Shadow Weaver follows meekly along behind, clutching her comparative pea-shooter.

Wordlessly Catra jogs onwards, through the open riddle-gate, down the corridor to the lobby chamber. Catra stops briefly to drop a heavy bomb near the beginning of the corridor.

The column in the lobby chamber which Catra once hid behind has long since been removed. Now it is occupied by yet more Horde soldiers. Blood splatters indicate a battle was fought here recently, and yet new personnel is already on guard.

There is too many, and not enough cover. Catra reaches out with her mind, and makes them _hesitate._ Just a fraction is enough; she sweeps the fast-firing auto-cannon over the various sand-bag arrangements, hitting some but mostly forcing the rest to duck into cover. Her blackguards shoot through cover with their rifles, and Catra keeps the suppression up, until everyone is dead.

Catra jogs up to the central podium. “Hope?”

“`Hello Catra,`” Hope says, appearing.

“I need to know where Adora is, I need to warn her about the drill.”

“`Fortuitous. I have been trying to reach her myself for some time now,`” Hope says. “`Please, descend with haste; Adora is in the Lower Sphere.`”

“Yeah, but _where?_ ”

“`Difficult to say exactly. I shall keep you appraised if possible.`”

Hope points them to an open gate, leading to a corridor full of rubble.

“`Adora decided to block the way.`”

“Great,” Catra says. Then she takes out a remote detonator, and presses the red button.

Up the corridor by the riddle gate, an enormous explosion ravages the tunnel, causing it to collapse as well. She takes Shadow Weaver by the upper arm, and then shadow steps past Adora’s tunnel collapse.

A few dozen feet down the dark corridor, they reach the shaft.

“So what now?”

Catra holds out her hands, and from them, a slow rolling wave of darkness begins unveiling a truly massive object. Within seconds it resolves itself into a galactic Horde battle aircraft. Sleekly aerodynamic, with swept delta wings, pointed directly nose-down.

“Where did you get this?” Shadow Weaver asks.

Tendrils of darkness shoot out, connecting it to the walls, suspending it.

The open cockpit seats two, and hangs just beyond the railing.

“Get in,” Catra says.

Shadow Weaver climbs onto the railing, and very gingerly manages to get purchase on the back of the pilot’s chair, crawling inside.

Catra just hops right on, and crouches down inside to take the pilot’s seat.

“I’m going to drop us. You need to strap in when I do,” Catra says.

Then the plane is released, and free-fall sets in, rendering them both weightless. Catra rights herself with respect to the plane, and pushes back into the seat. She runs the engine ignition, and the twin turbojet engines come alive. Then she maxes out the throttle, engages the afterburners, and they begin their mad dash for the bottom of the shaft.

* * *

The trip by skiff felt a lot shorter the first time. Glimmer dozes off, while Adora stands by the till, taking them across the uneven rolling hills.

She reaches the edge of the forest, and finds the tree she chained the bike to — it’s still there, in this imaginary vista.

The skiff fits nicely between the trees; at least most of the time. She makes a few short detours to avoid particularly dense underbrush that might snag something underneath the craft.

And then they arrive in the clearing. Adora throws the anchor, and hops down. Bow helps Glimmer to her feet.

There, in the center of the clearing is the Aegis, in the shape of a sword. Adora heads to it.

“Adora, wait up,” Glimmer says.

She doesn’t.

“This is the way out of this scene,” Adora notes, standing over the golden hilt jutting out from the forest floor.

“What?” Bow asks. He and Glimmer approaches her; but letting there be a few steps between them. There’s something in the air; like a bad omen.

Adora draws a shaky breath. “I know what’s going on now. This place is responding to our memories; all of us.” She reaches to her sternum and her hand passes through the glowing glyph there. “When we were driving, I zoned out, thinking about— it doesn’t matter what. And then there was a door.”

She turns to Bow and Glimmer. “Then we went to the woods; are you homesick, Bow?”

“Yeah.”

“And the sacred cave, Glimmer, the succession ritual still bothers you, doesn’t it?”

Glimmer looks away.

“And now, this.” She looks down at the sword. “I don’t think we’re getting out; I think this place wants us to wade through our regrets forever.”

“How do we break the cycle?” Bow asks.

“When I broke the Aegis, I thought for a moment I could make my own way; forge my own destiny. But I don’t think I can, anymore. I think this is the way it’s supposed to be. So… I’m just going to accept my fate now. No regrets.”

Bow and Glimmer look at each other. “What do you mean ‘accept your fate,’ Adora?” Glimmer says.

“Adora —” Bow says

“I need to go the rest of the way by myself. I know my own regrets. I can fight them.”

She turns halfway and looks back at them. “I love you guys so much. I never could have done any of this without you. Thank you for being the best friends anyone could ever hope for.” Then she looks the other way, hugging herself. “But… I can’t have attachments like that if I’m going to make it; I can’t let my emotions influence my judgment, not now when I need my full power — it’s too important.”

“Adora, wait!”

“Goodbye.”

Her hand closes around the hilt. There’s an impossibly bright flash of light.

Glimmer and Bow opens their eyes, and find themselves back in the impossibly long corridor.

* * *

“Brother! So nice of you to join me,” Prime says, from atop his throne, at the nexus of a mess of wires and connectors, like a spider perched, awaiting prey.

Hordak has been strip-searched, examined, scanned, and then, oddly, dressed in armor and armed with a side-arm.

“To what do I owe the pleasure?” he asks.

Prime smiles. “I was wrong in my estimation of you, Brother. I thought you corrupted; when in fact you are _brilliant._ The rebels captured you, turned you against me once more, and where do I find you? Attempting to overthrow my very dominion. My sanitized empire.”

Hordak looks around the room at his technician brethren working the machinery.

“And I realized, that anyone who could accomplish such a feat should not be merely cast aside. No. Brother, I am prepared to extend my grace to you; forgive you of your transgressions. You deserve to ascend to stand by my side.”

Hordak chuckles. “Positive incentive. Where lies the negative?”

The green forcefield gate opens behind Hordak, and he turns to look.

Entrapta is led in, in manacles. Her head is bald, and she has been — no doubt forcibly — dressed in acolyte uniform. She looks up, seeing Hordak, then looks down.

“Welcome, little rebel,” Prime says. “You are just in time to witness the end of your world. And then; the universe.”

“Yes, Lord Prime,” Entrapta says.

* * *

All across the planet, every hologram spire still standing broadcasts the message.

" _Rejoice, Etheria, for today your star dawns on your recknoning. I have offered you unity, and to the belligerent among you, I have extended every mercy, but…_

“ _You have spurned my good graces. Alas. So it will have to be._ ”

Prime’s form fades, and is replaced by Entrapta.

“ _Please, surrender. Our ill-gotten plan to free everyone has been… interrupted. Fighting is meaningless,_ ” Entrapta says. “ _Our resistance has been for naught._ ”

Prime fades back into view. “ _Very soon now, Etheria will be mine. And then, all that awaits is a terrible and eternal night._ ”

Catra gets to watch the entire message play out on the console of the aircraft; of course there’s a hologram projector there.

“So, what now?” Shadow Weaver asks her from the back seat.

“Now nothing. We go help Adora. We still can’t let him get the Heart.”

A warning light turns on: a ground warning. The plane is almost out of fuel too.

Catra tries to blink away the cloudy darkness in her vision, to see clearly. Going by her instincts she pulls up, _hard,_ and the plane levels out with incredible force.

And then they’re flying horizontally, down a level tunnel.

Then Catra spots something; two small specks on the horizon. They move to the sides of the tunnel well before her arrival. As Catra flies past at over the speed of sound she catches a glimpse of two figures in differently-colored armor suits.

“Sparkles!” Catra exclaims, and cuts the engines, hits maximum flaps, deploys breaking parachute, and generally does everything she can to stop the plane. The wheels touch down, and she engages the wheel brakes.

It works too, a mile down the road.

The cockpit canopy slides back, and Catra hops out, landing heavily on the floor, ten feet down. Shadow Weaver crawls down, going over the wing.

Glimmer and Bow approach, flying and skating. Glimmer lands, Bow skids to a halt.

“Catra?” Bow asks, as they approach.

“Sparkles, Flyboy!” Catra yells out, running up to meet them; she grabs both of them by the shoulder. “Where’s Adora?”

“She left us behind,” Glimmer says, looking away, holding back tears. “She’s headed to the Heart on her own.”

Catra clutches her helmet in both hands. “Of _course_ she would! Of course! That’s _what she does,_ isn’t it?”

“Catra, what is going on; why are you here now?” Bow asks.

“We’re getting our asses kicked up there; Prime just landed this gigantic drill thing, and we have like ten minutes until he becomes Hope’s problem. And once he gets past her, he’ll be _here._ ”

“He’s gonna take the heart!” Bow says, with genuine fear in his voice.

“Yeah. Lonnie’s launching an all-out attack to try and stop it, but it’s not looking good.”

“An all-out— They’re all going to die! Or worse, get captured!” Glimmer says.

Catra closes her eyes. “He’s got Entrapta. Prime just sent out a message about how we’re all doomed. Put her on display in front of everyone; she’s been sanitized.”

“Then— then they failed. We’re not going to free all the sanitized people,” Bow says.

Catra pauses. “Come to think of it, she said their plan had been _interrupted,_ not that it had failed outright.”

Bow looks at Glimmer. “We have to get back up there; if we can bust in and get to the hive engine, maybe we can re-start the plan!”

“We can’t just leave Adora!” Glimmer protests.

“I’m staying,” Catra says. “I’m going to go find her.”

Glimmer turns to look at her. Even though the bulky armor, she’s shivering. She’s blinking to try to get the shadows away. She looks miserable, exhausted, and on the verge of tears.

“Catra—”

“ _I can’t lose her again,_ Okay?!” she yells. Tears start rolling down her cheeks, and she tries to wipe them away, but the visor’s in the way. “I should never have run away! I’m a _stupid coward!_ I _promised_ her that I’d look out for her — I promised her a _long time ago._ ”

She sniffs, and takes a deep breath, composing herself. “It’s time I upheld that.”

Glimmer steps up to her and puts a hand on her neck. Their helmets butt together with a ‘clink.’ “Take care of her, gutter trash.”

Catra pulls her into a hug. “That’s the plan, Sparkles.” Then she lets go. “And good luck.”

Bow scoffs. “We don’t _need_ luck. We’re the _Starlight Brigade._ ”

“I hate to be a voice of practicality, but we really need to go,” Shadow Weaver says quietly. And for once, she’s not snarky or condescending.

Glimmer puts a hand on Bow’s shoulder, and in a puff of light, they’re gone.

* * *

They arrive in the dread arctic night, kept warm by their suits alone.

“This is Glimmer calling; Runestone Corps, come in… Sorcery corps? Anyone?”

“ _Queen Glimmer, this is General Lonnie._ ”

“What’s going on?”

" _The hive engine infiltation team has been compromised. We’re attacking the drill, but I don’t like our chances. What news from below?_

“Adora’s run off to play hero. Catra’s going after her,” Glimmer says.

“ _Let’s hope she makes it. Glimmer, I’m turning you over to Scorpia; Bow—_ ”

“ _I’ll take over from here, General,_ ” Peekablue says smoothly.

A portal opens near Glimmer and Bow, and he steps through, armor blue as always. “Bow! Queen Glimmer!”

“Prince Peekablue,” Glimmer greets him.

“Listen; Glimmer, the drill is guarded by a sizable number of clone sorcerers. If we can get rid of those, the artillery can take it out easily. I’m thinking that’s something you can help with.”

Glimmer nods. She flexes her hand, and her staff blinks into it.

“Bow— I need your help.”

“With the hive engine?” Bow says.

Peekablue nods. “You’ve worked with Entrapta the longest; I know you’re just a pilot, but you’re good with tech.”

Bow unfolds his bow. “Say no more.”

“Wait—” Glimmer says. She removes her cloak in its rolled-up configuration, and hands it to Peekablue. “Catra’s work. Genuine invisibility.”

Peekablue accepts it, and slings the elongated bundle of cloth around his shoulders, where it latches in place. “Thank you.”

Glimmer turns to Bow, and flicks her visor up. Bow does the same, and she flutters off the ground into his arms. They kiss, passionately.

“Don’t make me a widow before we’re even married,” she says.

“Don’t you die either.”

Then she lets go, but as she slides away, their hands meet for one final squeeze.

“I love you,” Bow says.

“I love you too,” Glimmer replies. Then she lets go, and takes off. Reaching the middle distance, she blinks away.

“Are you comfortable with insertion by air-drop?” Peekablue asks.

Bow looks at him with a level gaze. “… Yes.”

Peekablue puts a hand on his helmet. “Sorry; I could have told myself— look, I’ve been… Never mind.” He orders a portal, and the rush of air from the pressure differential heralds the altitude.

* * *

“If you won’t let me, I will just have to _make_ you,” Adora grumbles through clenched teeth, eyes firmly closed.

She opens them. “Ha! It worked!”

Before her lies the barren plains of Krytis; the gravelly mountain side, up which is the entrance to the complex housing the hexagonal shaft, the access to the Heart of Krytis. It’s as good a plan as any, and Adora feels like it might work.

She takes off with Halcyon, flying low and fast, up to the hidden-away broken riddle gate.

There, she heads through the hole Catra cut with the Parabell blade that became Bane, and flies down the hallway to the lobby chamber, then past the remains of their base camp, into the open elevator shaft, and down.

The corridors turn narrow and windy, so she resorts to running instead — navigating through the darkness at a dead sprint, guided by Halcyon as her visor interface, holding the map they made.

She reaches the shaft, where the remnants of the elevator cradle still cross the shaft above, interwoven like a spider’s web.

A look down confirms that the shaft is still there, and Adora vaults the railing.

She spins in the air, creating thrusters not only on her boots, but in her palms, and a big one on her back as well. Trailing a long streak of Starlight she accelerates downwards like an upside-down rocket ship. There’s a sudden shudder, and her visor informs her she has broken the sound barrier.

Too late she realizes that on the way down, Melog showed her visions of the past.

Then reality shifts, and she’s flying at incredible speeds over a vast field of violet grass, under a purple sky, beset with Etheria’s three moons.

Adora lets herself tumble over and boosts in the opposite direction to brake, then manifests a set of gold-white wings once her speed is low enough. When she stops, she has crossed the plains, and flown over into the forest.

Someone is standing down there, on the crest of a steep cliff, waving up at her. Four someones.

Pivoting, Adora glides down, coming in to land.

It is four familiar faces. Sheherazade, the Demon, the first She-Ra. Stella Nova, the Angel, the last free She-Ra and ancestor to the Brightmoon dynasty. Parabell, the first Eternian She-Ra and wielder of the Aegis. Damara, her mother; as she was.

Adora lands. Sheherazade stands in front, supporting herself on a gnarled cane. Adora hasn’t really noticed how ancient the little winged, horned, and tailed woman is.

She looks at Adora for a moment, then looks out at the vista again. «Hello, Adora.»

“Sheherazade,” Adora says. “Stella Nova, Parabell. Mom. I need to get to the Heart, do you know which way it is?”

«There is no way,» Sheherazade says. «Once we are done talking, you will move on.»

“I’m going to save Etheria, no matter what it takes,” Adora says, looking out at the landscape. A river flows through the forested valley below. It is beautiful. Adora wonders if it is real; and then realizes she will never see it with her own eyes in the real world.

There’s a hand on her shoulder. Adora looks to its owner. Damara.

“Damara?”

Mara shakes her head. “I am not her. I am who she once was. She-Ra.”

“Then—” Adora says. She looks down. “Your sacrifice won’t be in vain. I promise.”

“At what cost?”

Adora looks up.

“I never wanted to die. I sacrificed myself in the hopes that you could live in peace. That the next incarnation would never be; or at least never have to do the same.”

Adora looks to Stella Nova and Parabell, who both nod. They both gave their lives for the greater good, too.

“Why are you doing this, daughter mine?” Mara asks.

“Because someone has to,” Adora says. “And it fell to me to do it. It’s better this way; my friends will be safe… Happy.”

“And you?” Mara says, lifting Adora’s chin up, to look her in the eyes. Brilliant blue to bottomless brown. “What do _you_ want when all of this is over?”

Adora looks away. “What does it matter. I’m She-Ra.”

«We all are, girl,» Parabell says.

“Adora,” Mara says, holding both her hands. "You deserve love and happiness, same as everyone. Your worth is not counted in heroic deeds or duties fulfilled; it is not the compassion and generosity with which you treat your fellows.

“Your value is other — far _greater_ — than the sum of your actions.”

Adora nods. A tear forms in the corner of her eye.

Mara has nothing else left to say. There is nothing left to say. For all the profundity of her philosophy… The universe is at stake, and a sacrifice must be made.

She turns away, looking out at the view once more. “Sheherazade?”

«Very soon now,» Sheherazade says.

«A word, as we part,» Stella Nova says. «Don’t mourn what could have been. Relish what you had. That gave me solace in my final hours.»

Adora looks at her.

«And Parabell and I are very honored that you named your arms after us.»

A flicker goes through reality.

Sheherazade perks up, looking at the sky. «This isn’t supposed to happen,» she mutters.

The green moon turns in the sky, and its back-side reveals itself as the shape of a face; jaw, pate, and a featureless expanse between the two. No mouth, no eyes. The sharp angles of the jawline is familiar.

A brilliant-green pupil-less eye opens up. Then another, opposite it. Then another above that, and one below. Three eyes on one side, one on the other. A kind of dread asymmetry.

The sky turns green like paint soaking into fabric.

“Prime,” Adora says. “Oh no.”


	23. Abolition, Part Final

Glimmer arrives above a bloody pitched battle. Makeshift trench-works laid in the glacial ice in haste by sorcery and Runestone powers. The portal artillery sends sweeping streaks of death across the Horde lines, and machine gun fire tears into the advancing Horde forces.

In retrospect, the notion of attacking the drill is ludicrous. The safe passage out to geosynchronous orbit provides a steady flow of drop ships. Raiding parties are teleported into position by the Iron Fist. And the Horde army stationed at the base is moving out, despite Damara’s harassment. Even if the drill wasn’t going to get them all killed, the hundred-thousand strong approaching from behind would.

The resistance are about to be surrounded.

But at least there’s no incoming artillery fire. It takes Glimmer a moment to realize why: _he could hit a Wielder. He is not goiing to risk killing one of us and disabling the Heart._

In the air above the trenches, however, she spies at the very least Scorpia — judging by the lightning — duking it out with what is presumably a large number of triple-clones.

She looks skyward. As pressing as the drill is, the Iron Fist is capable of mounting an entire defense by itself.

“This is Glimmer to the Artillery, Captain Rogelio?”

“ _We’re a little busy at the moment, Queen,_ ” Rogelio rumbles back.

"You wouldn’t happen to have any really big bombs on hand?

There’s a pause. “ _You know, I might have just the thing. Give me a moment — yeah, we have a few in storage. Let me get you a portal._ ”

A portal opens in the air next to her, and rather than attempt to fly though, Glimmer blinks inside; underground. It’s a dimly lit hall with rows and rows of cylindrical units the size of sixty gallon wine casks.

“ _Here’s the manual —_ ” A notification pops up in her visor “ _— I cannot stress enough how careful you have to be. Do you understand?_ ”

“I do,” Glimmer says. “I’ve almost destroyed the world once or twice before.”

She heads up to one, and with an eye gesture selects the ‘final checkup and arming procedure’ manual. Overlaid on her visor comes several steps, complete with indication of what goes where.

It takes agonizing minutes to prepare it for use. Glimmer keeps glancing at the count-down in her visor.

Then she grabs it, tilts it off its base, and with a heave brings it onto her shoulder. Fortunately it weights a _lot_ less than a full barrel of wine.

Glimmer blinks out of the hall, leaving a collapsing cavity of vacuum in her place, with a bang…

Appearing in orbit — or rather, falling towards Etheria from a hundred and twenty miles up, over the approximate center of the Southern Reach — she locates the Iron Fist thousands of miles away by its enormous engine plume.

From this distance, with a clear shot, and without intervening air, she can extend her power all the way out to the column of spacecraft, hanging like a pearl necklace of stars, stretching impossibly into the blackness above.

Gauging the extent of the Runestone suppressor field, she estimates the appropriate angle to cast the wardbreaking spell. Glimmer prepares to cast, projecting the circle with her power to cross the yawning void of vacuum…

“There has to be clone sorcerers aboard to counter such things,” Glimmer says.

She spends a moment thinking about it — her anti-illusion counterspell only works at short ranges, and she can’t cast within the suppressor field from where the clone sorcerers will be casting.

For several seconds of falling, Glimmer strains her mind to come up with a solution to this apparent paradox, until she remembers one key fact:

Free space. All around the Iron Fist is nothing. No suppressors, no materials, nothing.

Feeling truly audacious, Glimmer grins an evil grin. “Suck on this one, Prime,” she says, and casts.

* * *

“Micah!”

Micah looks at Castaspella by the stairs to the dugout — they’ve had to make them way deeper since ice is so much weaker than rock. She points to the sky. He runs to her side and looks up.

There, in the black sky is the Iron Fist, an evil blue star.

Around it is a spell circle, possibly hundreds of miles in diameter, centered on the Iron Fist. It is so large he can _read it with the naked eye:_ a counterspell.

“Glimmer,” he says.

* * *

Blinking empty nothingness is the easiest thing in the world. Devoid of the ability to cast spells, Glimmer casts the wardbreaker spell against the Runestone suppression field — unimpeded by the counterspell, since she isn’t actually conjuring an illusion to do so; just using the puffs of light generated by the Moonstone.

The wards go down for a split second, and Glimmer feels it. She touches the bomb falling next to her, and it too vanishes.

* * *

There’s a blinding flash of light by the Iron Fist, and the blue star starts drifting off course.

“What in the world did we just witness?” Castaspella asks.

Then there’s a puff of light, and Micah turns.

“There,” Glimmer says. “The Iron Fist should have other things to worry about than raiding parties for a little while at least. Shall we get started on tearing that drill down?”

Micah blinks.

“This is Glimmer to Colonel Scorpia, can you keep the triple-clones off me while I do something big?”

There’s a pause. “ _That’s kind of what we’re doing already!_ ” Scorpia replies, sounding strained.

Glimmer, pushes past Micah. “Dad? Get everyone. I’ll need all the cover I can get.”

* * *

With three and a half minutes to go on the clock, everything is ready. As many soldiers and sorcerers as can be spared are beginning to lay covering fire on the advancing enemy. Using their spell-gloves the efficacy of the otherwise middling corps of battle mages has skyrocketed.

Fire, lightning, shields, and counter-spells are thrown about.

Glimmer takes off into the sky. “Colonel Kyle, are your guns in position?”

“ _Aimed and ready to fire on your signal._ ”

Glimmer reaches out once more, feeling the building migraine this time, as air is substantially heavier to move than pure _nothing_ — mitigated by the suppression field around the drill being a lot smaller — and casts the counter-spell once more.

The gigantic glowing circle is a sight to behold.

“ _Now!_ ” Glimmer yells.

Nineteen portals open in a circle, miles out and up from the drill.

Nineteen orange beams of destruction lance out, striking true, and boiling away the armor panelling with such ferocity it explodes. The drill shudders. The portals close up for safety.

“ _Again!_ ” Glimmer yells.

Nineteen more beams. Nineteen explosions.

“Target the legs!”

Three legs on one side each take a third of the fire, six beams each, and are obliterated in an instant. Lacking support, the Drill begins to tilt, slowly.

“Yes!” Glimmer exclaims, and lets the counter-spell circle wink out.

Then the drill lifts two of its legs, one after the other, pivoting them on their attachment joints, shifting them languidly past its center of mass, and bringing them down in a stable triangular configuration.

Glimmer grunts, and begins casting the counter-spell again.

Then the green drilling beam winks out.

“Was that— this is Glimmer, can I just get a confirmation that the drill has been disabled?” Glimmer asks, looking through the maximum magnification possible on her visor.

Then she sees it: a solid device — a long shaft or cable — shoots out of the drill, down the cherry-red glow of the bore hole.

“Negative! That’s the probe! They’ve hit the cthonic infrastructure!” Glimmer calls out. She gathers power, and casts the counter-spell again.

“Kyle, the legs!”

Another salvo obliterates the three remaining legs.

Undeterred, three blue lances of fire ignite, and the Drill levitates up slightly, using its fusion torch engines to stay upright.

“Hit the engines!”

With the final circle of portals, orange beaks strike the engines on the side of the craft, and the plumes of fusion fire peter out. The drill falls, strikes ground with its tip, and falls over ever so slowly, finally striking ground with tremendous force.

There’s whooping and elated yells throughout the resistance army.

“Damara? Hope? Anyone in the know come in?” Glimmer says. “Did we get him?”

There’s a pause.

“`Negative! I repeat! Negative! Horde Prime has accessed the Cthonic Infrastructure. Engaging now!`”

* * *

Bow and Peekablue dive through the sky, cloaks billowing about them, invisible.

“ _What do you think happened?_ ” Bow asks.

“ _Loath as I am to admit it, I suspect my wife is to blame. She is… She has trouble resisting an opportunity to seize power. The plan was she would use her crontol to un-sanitize every single sanitized person, and destroy the hive engines’ psychic network. I told her my concern and she eased my concerns; I trusted her…_ ”

“ _I’m not going to fault your for trusting the woman you love,_ ” Bow says.

“ _We may need to kill her. I am not sure I can do that._ ”

Peekablue veers off in their dive, heading for some kind of entrance he has spotted — Bow can’t see it, even with image intensification.

The ground rushes up, and they turn on their hover systems; Peekablue has a conventional belt, Bow has his boots; and come to a quiet landing, unseen.

Peekablue takes the lead, heading them down into a shallow dip, and up to a concealed entrance — just a door and an unlabeled keypad for access.

Deftly, Peekablue types in a ten-digit code, and the door opens. He draws a Yala-Zev, and they run inside.

They head through identical-looking corridors, all hewn from raw stone. Clones pass them by, completely oblivious.

A few minutes in, they encounter the first obstacle. A clone soldier guarding a physical door: an airlock delineating the complex cut from the bedrock, from the complex containing the hive engine.

Two clone soldiers guard it.

Peekablue takes out a First-Ones’-made knife. Bow nocks an arrow. Sneaking behind one of them, Peekablue plunges his dagger into the clone’s neck between the armor panels. Bow puts one of his magic arrows through the brain case of the other.

Working quickly, Peekablue takes out a breaching tool, slapping it on the door where it spins up and gets them into the airlock without trace; then again on the other door, getting them out again.

They run up a corridor of plastic panelling, entering the hive engine carrier spacecraft at the end. All the doors are open, and no guards are on their posts. Peekablue leads them around the radially linked bulkheads until they find the gates leading _inwards._

In the innermost antechamber they find out why there are no guards. Twenty-five clones are occupying the room, readying a breaching operation. By the door a pair of technicians are starting to cut through the blast doors with an oxygen torch.

Peekablue takes out a pair of fragmentation-free grenades, handing them to Bow, then another pair for himself, he pulls the pins on both, and Bow follows suit. Peekablue mimes to Bow to release the safety levers, then _roll_ the little oblong cylindrical weapons into the midst of the clones.

Bow picks his targets, and Peekablue times his own rolls to Bow’s. The four safety levers hit the floor with sounds drowned out by the noise of the oxygen torch. Then it is bombs away, and Bow and Peekablue duck into cover.

Their helmets drown out the din of the four blasts.

In the ensuing chaos they both storm in. Bow picks off two of the survivors, putting a magic arrow through the armor of each, Peekablue finishes off another three with his Yala-Zev.

Standing amidst the carnage, Peekablue speaks. “This is too thick for the breaching tool.” He points. “Two keys; they took them inside.”

“So what do we do?”

Peekablue perks up. “Portal!” He takes out his communicator and dials a portal.

“I thought this whole place was under a portal suppressing ward,” Bow says.

A portal opens, connecting the outside of the blast door with the inside.

Bow enters first, and emerges into the hive engine chamber.

Peekablue follows closely behind. The portal winks out behind them.

It’s a scene of horror.

In the center of an incredibly complex diagram, Sweet Bee is lying curled up in foetal position, sobbing.

Two insect dolls lie dead, shot multiple times, leaking black blood. Three clone soldiers are strewn about, and there’s a long trail of off-color blood across the floor leading to the wardbreaker beacon. The portal-suppression countermeasure has been re-installed, and at the foot of it, Wrodak is lying, bleeding to death from an inch-wide hole directly through his side.

He looks over at Bow and Peekablue. “ _P-please, help her,_ ” he croaks, pointing at Sweet Bee.

Peekablue rushes to his wife’s aid; Bow runs over to Wrodak.

“ _H-hey master Bow,_ ” Wrodak croaks. “ _I’m s-sorry._ ”

“Shush, don’t speak —” Bow casts about for anything and spots the medical cart Hordak used for his surgical tools. He runs to it and retrieves a canister of wound sealant. Pouring it into Wrodak’s wound elicits a sharp cry of pain, but the vitals monitored by his suit starts picking up almost immediately. Unfortunately they don’t have painkillers for clones at hand.

“Bow, if Wrodak is stable, I need your help, Peekablue says.”

Bow looks over to see Peekablue sitting on the floor, holding Sweet Bee’s head in his lap.

“Is everything all right?” Bow asks.

“Don’t ask stupid questions; not now,” Peekablue responds. “I need you to resume what Entrapta interrupted.”

Bow heads over to the control console, and looks at the password field.

“Got any wild hint with your seer powers?” Bow asks. “I’m drawing a blank.”

“Uh,” Peekablue says. “I’m getting adjective-noun. A concisely stated concept. Uh; weddings?”

Bow perks up. “Wait! Let me just try —”

`IMPERFECT BEAUTY`

The console unlocks.

“Got it!” Bow says.

“What was it?” Peekablue says.

“Her wedding vows. I won’t repeat them; she told me in confidence,” Bow says, looking over the operating parameters for the in-progress usurpation ritual. “We’re looking at maybe ten minutes.”

There’s a rustle over to the side, Bow looks over to see Wrodak struggling to his feet. He gestures for Bow to stay put. Walking slowly, clutching his side, he makes his way over to the machine guns, and pulls up a box to sit on.

“Right,” Peekablue says. “I’m going to slip into a trance now, and commune with her.”

“You’re going to _what?_ ” Bow asks.

Peekablue taps the back of his head. “Magic tattoo. Psychic rapport. Precaution against her losing herself in overusing the Hive Core.”

“What’s wrong with her?” Bow asks, looking at the addled woman.

“Among other things, she has lost the ability to speak,” Peekablue notes. “Keep an eye on the parameters, yell if there’s anything.” Then he closes his eyes.

And then there’s silence. Only the odd rubles from the hive engine, and whirring of machinery. Bow looks at the screen, where a little progress bar sits, holding steady at eleven percent. He looks at Wrodak.

“Are you holding up, buddy?” Bow asks.

Wrodak grunts. Sitting down helps. “She sanitized me,” he says.

“She did _what?_ ” Bow says, looking up. He forces his sudden boiling fury back to a slow simmer.

“Don’t worry; I’m no devotee of Prime. She did it in desperation.”

“But you killed her bug-men,” Bow says.

“For her own good.”

Bow frowns. “We’ll get you fixed up after this is over,” Bow says.

“Please do; it does her no good to have this kind of power over someone.”

Bow raises an eyebrow and looks away from the progress bar once more. “I thought sanitized people wanted to _stay_ sanitized.”

“I _want_ what’s best for her. I’m not so deluded as to think her wants and her needs are in any way in accord. Prime is dangerous precisely because he wants what he needs and vice versa.”

The progress bar begins counting up with a little beeping noise. “Holy shit, Peekablue pulled through,” Bow says.

Then there’s a whirring noise from the blast doors.

“They’re cutting it again,” Wrodak says, and grabs hold of the spade grips on the machine gun.

* * *

Catra turns to Shadow Weaver. “We need to find Adora,” she says.

“You sound like you expect me to have the solution,” Shadow Weaver says.

“That’s because I _do._ You’re more powerful than you let on, but every once in a while you let things slip — like closing that portal, going toe to toe with Micah, or _eating an obtainer._ So don’t give me that line.”

Shadow Weaver looks at her unflinching.

“Well? You’ve always been able to track us!”

“Until Adora had my old colleagues shade her from my eyes, sure.”

Catra growls, and with rapid strides step inside Shadow Weaver’s personal space. “ _Listen to me!_ You’re the most brilliant sorceress in a generation; the _universe_ is about to get _blown up_ and I am _ordering you_ to _find Adora._ I don’t _care_ if you have to invent a whole new _paradigm_ of magic — you have _fifteen minutes!_ ”

Then Catra goes over to the plane, hops up on the wing in a single bound, and sits, crossing her legs and arms, glaring down at Shadow Weaver.

Shadow Weaver takes a deep breath. “I need gunpowder. Smokeless.”

“What?”

“I need a powder to draw with — the impermanence will be significant, and with gunpowder doubly so.”

Catra holds out a hand and pulls out a box of ammo on its side — a machine gun belt sans disintegrating links and bullets. Two hundred little brass bottles of gun powder. She brings it to Shadow Weaver with her backhand.

* * *

«Go!» Sheherazade yells.

Adora turns and run.

Behind her, the moon steps out of the sky. Sprouts tendrils that braid together into a neck, an elongated torso, over-long arms ending in claw-hands, bony free-standing hips, and long muscular legs ending in digitigrade feet. A serpentine tail lashes out behind the indeterminably-sized creature standing on the horizon.

Prime.

Then it leaps into the scene, bounding across the landscape with terrifying speed.

Parabell draws her rifle and opens fire, spewing whatever terrifying munitions the First-Ones’ dreamt up before Zev revolutionized arms design; Prime merely zigzags his approach and takes nary a single hit.

He reaches the foot of the cliff, and scales it at a dead gallop, and arrests his momentum completely as he crests it, perching opposite the four She-Ras.

Parabell draws her sword, Stella Nova draws a spell rune in pre-mystacorean style, Mara bids Aegis form her a battle suit and a halberd, and Sheherazade merely glows from within.

Then Adora reaches the treeline and ducks into the woods. She sprints between the unfamiliar trees, desperate for a place to hide: and the scenery provides. An animal burrow under a root. Adora dives into it feet-first, and the burrow turns out to be a lot deeper than anticipated, depositing her on her rear in a trench dugout.

There’s a blood spatter on the ground, and a shield with a bullet hole in it next to it.

“Really?” Adora says. Then she gets up, and runs out into the night.

She runs down the trench, and in a moment of brilliance, asks for a ‘rear view’ in her visor, so she can keep the green moon in view as she runs for the next dugout.

“Hey Adora.”

Adora stops, looking up on the lip of the trench, to see Catra; or rather, Prime _as_ Catra. It’s Catra’s form from the Velvet Glove: the gun bolted to her artificial arm, and the grotesque and obviosly artificial legs, braided hair, and simple shorts and blouse.

Prime hops into the trench.

Adora calls on Parabell, and a sword lances Prime through the throat.

The Catra-shaped body falls over, and a green mass of slime of some sort remains it its place; four glowing, asymmetrical eyes.

Adora turns to run, only for slime-Prime to just stand there. She looks behind her to see the first one still standing over the Catra-shaped puppet.

“How do you expect to outrun me in this figment, She-Ra? I’m already here, and very soon I shall be _everywhere._ ”

She lances the two slimes with Parabell, and channels Starlight into them, blowing them apart.

“Tut-tut. I win.”

The green moon becomes the reptile-like monster once more, and before Adora can react it is upon her. She brings Stella Nova up, and its veil of silk flows forth against the incoming claws.

Prime’s hand makes contact, and Adora feels the overwhelming force. She calls on starlight to aid her, and within _moments_ feels the heat tingling in her skin.

The hand doesn’t penetrate the veil; it just grasps around her as if it was nothing more than a handkerchief. Adora strains against the grip to no avail; Primes hand moves nary a thousandth of an inch.

“Let’s get rid of that troublesome She-Ra, shall we? And afterwards for good measure, that Failsafe; just to be sure.”

With his other enormous clawed hand, Prime peels away the veil. “Fortunate that you should end up _here_ in particular. Else I might not be able to do this…” Then he plunges one claw into Adora’s shoulder.

The pain is overwhelming, and there is a flash of light.

She-Ra vanishes, replaced by ordinary mortal Adora, dressed in utilitarian pants, boots, and a red uniform jacket.

Suddenly shrinking ten clothing sizes causes Prime’s grip to loosen substantially; and furthermore he has eased his strength so as to not crush her. Adora gets a hand free and reaches out to catch Parabell as it falls from the air, then plunges the blade into the webbing of Prime’s hand.

Halcyon leaps from her brow down to tie itself as a rope around her ankle, and the other end ties to a spear that plunges into the ground. The rope shortens, pulling Adora from Prime’s grasp.

Landing far too hard, she holds out a hand, and Stella Nova returns as if thrown.

Adora sprints, down the trench, closing her eyes and desperately wishing.

Since her wish is realistic, it comes true. A door to Swift Wind’s landing pylon’s elevator opens in mid air. Adora rushes in, and the doors close before Prime reacts.

Safety. Relatively so.

“This is Captain Adora, is anyone on board?” Adora asks.

No answer. No Darla. No Damara.

Adora punches the button on the elevator, and rides up. Adrenaline wears off, marginally, and the pain makes itself know: her foot, ankle, femur, and knee hurt. Probably a break.

Halcyon becomes a cane, and Adora attaches Stella Nova to the magnetic chuck on her back.

She makes her way to the infirmary for nothing but painkillers, and then to the armoury.

With quick, practiced motions, she suits up in a powered hazard suit her size. The camouflage turns white at her command. She gears up with a variety of weapons: a Toha-Zev, a squad automatic, raygun pistols, a satchel of grenades, another of various tools, and a powerful intentionally controlled thruster pack on the small of her back.

Stella Nova is back to being just a shield that returns when thrown; Halcyon probably doesn’t have many transformations left. Parabell is gone.

The Failsafe glyph still sits there on her sternum, glowing gently.

“`Adora. Took me long enough to find you.`”

Adora looks over to see Prime, in hologram, standing in the room with her. She grabs Stella Nova and places it on her back once more.

She says nothing to him, and strides into the cargo bay.

“`This craft is very sturdy. Getting it to self-destruct is proving a challenge, and I have not foothold to manifest physically.`”

Under manual controls, she opens one of the drop chutes, and leaps down into it.

The drop chute becomes long and a little narrower, with a ladder. Adora falls through it into a space of darkness, weightless. With the thruster pack, she re-aligns and puts herself down on the walkway with inlaid artificial gravity, and heads towards what she knows hides there: the Heart of Krytis.

And representationally therefore, a way to the Heart of Etheria.

The question left to ask is: does the Failsafe even have a chance of working, now that she is no longer She-Ra, or will the reversal kill her outright and then fizzle out?

There’s a figure sitting there, on the walkway, looking up at the impossible geometries wreathed in, yet somehow visible despite, the darkness.

Melog.

Except, of course, not.

The creature looks at her with green asymmetric eyes. Before she can bring her automatic rifle up, it is on her, tackling her into darkness, and out onto black sand under an overcast sky. Acidic raindrops fall, and Prime becomes the gigantic gangly reptilian once more.

There’s a tremor. Far above them, the cliff-face collapses in a rock-slide. Prime dodges out of the way, leaping up the other cliff side. Adora rolls to her feet and speeds for the entrance to the mines using her thruster pack.

* * *

Shadow Weaver has additionally requested and abacus, sketch paper and pens, and ‘something to make marks in the floor with’ for which Catra provided her with a hand-held die grinder.

She paces back and forth beside the incomprehensible and sprawling spell diagram she has created thus far.

“How are we on time?” she asks.

Catra opens one eye. “By the clock, we have less than a minute left,” Catra says. “But Hope just got in touch before the clock ran out; you have a ten-minute extension before we lose.”

Shadow Weaver nods. “Thank you for not hounding me about the deadline; could you inform me when there’s three minutes left?”

“Sure.”

Catra sets the alarm in her visor, closes her eye and resumes meditation. It’s actually quite nice to just get to sit down and rest; and meditation is the only way she can even approach the necessary level of calm to actually utilize it.

The alarm sounds, and she opens her eyes. The shadows are less pervasive now, and she feels at least a little warmer.

Shadow Weaver is lying on her back, staring at the ceiling. The diagrams have grown even more, and numerous crumbled sheets of paper lie strewn about.

The lighting in the tunnel are ominously greener.

“What now?”

“It can’t be done,” Shadow Weaver says. “Not under these circumstances, at any rate.”

“Okay, in a perfect world, how could it be done?” Catra says, hopping down from the wing of the airplane. Careful not to step on any lines of gunpower, she approaches Shadow Weaver.

“Well, pure sympathy might work, but we would need an _incredibly_ strong connection to Adora…”

“How strong?”

“A bond of life and death; something of hers; deep affection — mutual. Everything. We need Adora to get to Adora.”

Catra looks down at her. “You’re an idiot.”

“What?”

“Use me.”

Shadow Weaver sighs. “I’m an idiot.”

Catra holds down a hand; Shadow Weaver takes it, and lets herself be pulled to her feet. “An admission of failure, _from you?_ I need to preserve this moment for posterity.”

Shadow Weaver starts pacing and thinking aloud. “For this to work… I mean, thinking back, your destinies are quite neatly intertwined. Grew up together, fought together, you were enemies, then reconciled; you are taxonomically the same clade of entity. She brought you back to life, did she not?”

Catra nods. “I haven’t _directly_ saved her life, but I’ve kept her out of trouble a good few times. Cured her blindness.”

“Good, good; something of hers?”

Catra holds out Bane. “This used to be one of her magic swords.”

“And she; something of yours?”

“Halcyon. Her shapeshifting weapon. I restored it and gave it to her,” Catra says.

Shadow Weaver rubs her hands together. “As for affection; I know you two are fond of one another, a fact which I once exploited.”

“Yeah, an apology for that would be nice at some point.”

“Hm,” Shadow Weaver says, non-committally. “There’s but one thing I can think of.”

“What’s that?”

“Love.”

Catra looks away.

“Well? I’ll need to hear it by your own admission for this to have the highest chance of working,” Shadow Weaver says.

“Yeah, I love her. And she loves me. But she doesn’t want me,” Catra says quietly. “Not the way I want her.”

“Hm,” Shadow Weaver repeats. “That will have to do. Are you fit to step through the shadows, or whatever it is you do?”

Catra nods.

Shadow Weaver holds out a hand, Catra takes it.

Then she flips up her visor, and with her little finger inscribes a glowing circle around her _other_ eye. From the circle grows a heptagram and her iris and pupil fade into the sclera.

With a gesture, she draws a circle in the air — it seems like an illusion of solid light, but upon close inspection one would be able to see the utter density with which it is inscribed.

Shadow Weaver thrusts her hand through it, and Catra takes it. The light falls away around them.

The timer in Catra’s visor hits one minute.

“Then _take us there,_ ” Shadow Weaver says.

Then Catra knows where Adora is, and she steps into the shadows.

* * *

Only for something to intercept them in transit. Catra doesn’t even know how that is possible. Five gigantic glowing eyes light up in the pitch black, and a shrill howl echoes in the apparently enormous space.

“ _Light!_ ” Catra yells, and Shadow Weaver quickly throws a powerful illumination spell upwards.

It’s a bare chamber, dome-shaped, and vast. In the ceiling, a vast and complex system of machinery hangs down like stalactites, humming and whirring.

And in the center of it is a gigantic creature. Worm-like and grotesque; five eyes full of hunger, and a maw full of teeth and tentacles.

It lunges, and a tentacle lances at Shadow Weaver.

Bane is in Catra’s hand and she puts the blade in the tentacle’s path, cleaving it down the middle, polluting the wound with deadly darkness.

The creature yowls.

A dozen tentacles shoot out, lashing around Catra. She hacks two off, but the others are too quick and too many. She is pulled off her feet and directly into the creature’s mouth in an eyeblink.

“Well, shit,” Shadow Weaver mutters.

Then a portal opens, and a large amount of slimy, foul-smelling stomach juice pours out, together with Catra.

The worm monster sees her, and hesitates a little; it’s rudimentary intellect wondering how the thing it just ate suddenly appeared again without it throwing up.

“Are you unhurt?” Shadow Weaver asks.

“Bastard didn’t even chew me,” Catra says. Then she opens her hand and a dozen grenade pins fall on the floor.

Several muted booms sound, and the creature writhes in pain, rolling onto its back, and then throwing up a large amount of viscera and purple blood.

It twitches a few times, then stops moving entirely.

“Impressive,” Shadow Weaver says.

The timer runs out, and the red numerals blink in Catra’s visor, counting up: a sort of clock showing time since the beginning of the apocalypse.

Catra looks up. “I bet that’s what caught us,” she says and points. “Some kind of security system against brute-force intrusion.”

“Possible.”

Even as they look at it, a few lights up above turn from blue to green.

Catra takes out her baryon-fermion-gravitron cannon and opens fire, methodically blowing the machinery to smithereens.

Sixteen blasts later, the entire floor is littered with burning and melted debris.

“Let’s try that again,” Catra says, puts a hand on Shadow Weaver’s shoulder, and steps them through the darkness that always exists under the ground.

* * *

“Ah — hm. Unfortunate,” Prime says.

“What is the matter, big brother?” Hordak asks.

“The rebels managed to damage the Iron Fist and destroy the drill.”

Hordak contains his relief.

“I did, however, manage to make contact and upload myself into the undeground networks before that. So their valiant effort was in vain. I’m in.”

Prime rises, and the technicians in the room hurry up to him, and start detaching him from the jacks, pipes, electrodes, and other interfaces.

“Now, I need merely defeat their feeble attempts at information defense, and then the Heart will be mine.”

Hordak’s mind races the entire time he stands there. Trying to work some angle out of this predicament. There _has_ to be one; if one he was smart enough to see it.

He looks at Entrapta, standing at ease, with a neutral expression.

“Well?” Prime asks.

“Forgive me, brother,” Hordak says. “Might I have some more time to consider this? After all, sentimentality is an insidious poison; it shall take me more than a moment to rid myself of it.”

Prime gestures magnanimously. “Take your time, but not too much.”

Hordak knows Prime is toying with him. That does not make it any less effective at rattling him.

Everywhere his mind turns, he finds no way to get out of this alive.

The hive engine team… If someone could come to their rescue, they might be able to start the ritual back up if all Entrapta did was interrupt it.

“Have you come to a conclusion?”

“I have,” Hordak says. “You can suck my dick.”

Prime smiles. “Alas. I though you might decide to spite me, now that victory is at hand. I see no point in having you executed; if the Heart works out to my liking, I shall be destroying all of reality, after all.”

Then there’s a subtle shift in reality.

Prime jerks forward, rising to his feet, panic dawning on his face. “ _What did you do?!_ ” he yells.

Entrapta falls to her knees besides Hordak, shivering. She sneezes, and from her nose rockets the sanitizing wasp, landing in a puddle of snot, writhing. Then it turns itself inside out and promptly dies as a little pile of viscera.

Hordak draws his pistol. “You erred in assuming _I_ was the mastermind behind that plan,” he says. “Or even that it had a mastermind. Or that our goal was to usurp, rather than merely _destroy._ ”

Prime laughs. “Oh! _Oh!_ I shall _rain fire_ on you for this!” he yells. “My revenge shall be _legendary._ And when I am done; your efforts shall all be for naught! I built the hive engines once! I can do it again! I—”

Hordak empties his magazine into Prime, hitting him several times in the head and the rest, center mass. “Shut up.”

Then he reloads, grabs Entrapta by the hand, and runs for the open forcefield gate. Now comes the hard part: clones are not loyal to Prime out of sanitization, but in large part out of conventional indoctrination. Indoctrination which Hordak cast off more by accident than anything else.

However, with the psychic network destroyed, Prime can no longer convey his wishes directly to the minds of his clones; nor read their thoughts, except by way of direct possession.

In the hallway, Hordak slows his pace. “Walk normally, pretend you are following Prime’s directives still,” Hordak says to Entrapta.

“Thanks,” Entrapta says.

“What for?”

“Shooting him.”

“Alas, I have not killed him. Not ye—”

Hordak stops, then shudders.

“Why, little brother,” he says, tone and cadence of his speech shifted completely. “Perhaps this princess wife of yours can aid me in constructing a new hive engine. We have all the materials on hand right here on the Velvet Glove.”

“Never!” Entrapta protests.

Prime puts Hordak’s pistol to his own temple. “Then say goodbye to your husband.”

“No!” Entrapta screams. She reaches out towards Hordak; then stops. She sighs. “I’ll help you. Just don’t hurt him.”

* * *

It’s an impossible enemy to fight, and this is the end. So tantalizingly close and yet so far, Adora has managed to construct a scene which will definitely lead to the heart. The bottom of the shaft under Dagon Rock.

Prime’s massive monstrous form stands between her and the access hatch down to the Heart. There is no way she will be able to slip his grasp, and no alternate paths to bend to her will.

“Hm,” Prime says. “Did you know the Runestone Wielders are technically entirely superfluous?”

“What?”

“I hope you got to say your goodbyes.”

Adora grits her teeth.

Then the lights flicker, somehow, and a huge beast of dark fur and billowing mane lands on top of Prime, sending him to the floor.

Shadow Weaver appears by Adora’s side. “Let’s go!” she says. “Catra will hold him off!”

“I lost She-Ra!” Adora says. “I’m not sure it’ll work!”

“I’ll cast us some kind of work-around! Now _go!_ ” Shadow Weaver yells.

Catra throws Prime across the room and into the wall of the shaft. Adora and Shadow Weaver sprint for the hatch; Shadow Weaver gestures at it from afar, causing it to spring open.

They leap in.


	24. Phantasmal, Resplendent

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cw: body horror, grave injuries, suicide

“Ew,” Bow says, wiping his visor — _thankfully,_ thankfully, just the visor and not his _face_ — clear of gunk.

The hive engine decided to barf up all its bodily fluids at once. Explosively.

“You okay there, Peekablue?” Bow asks.

“We’re fine; Sweet Bee is… In a bad way, but at least not getting any worse.”

“They’re cutting the door now!” Wrodak says.

The line of sparks from the oxygen torch reaches the bottom of the door, taking out the last of Hordak’s welds.

There’s a moment’s pause, then the doors slide apart.

Wrodak opens fire with the Zev machine gun; wisely none of the clones outside are actually standing in the open.

“Glimmer? Come in! We could use extraction!” He flicks on his helmet camera, unfolds his bow, and nocks and arrow.

“ _Roger!_ ”

Bow doesn’t even see her; just a puff of lilac light in his peripheral vision; then a second later, the familiar sensation of teleportation.

* * *

Then they’re in the triage area of the massive underground field hospital servicing the entire resistance fighting force for the duration of operation Cascade.

“Medic!” Glimmer yells.

“Decontamination protocol first!” Peekablue adds.

A trio of nurses already approaching, stop, and instead a team in hazmat suits, accompanied by buddy-bots, come up to them, carrying portable sprayers.

“What is this gunk?” one of them asks.

“A hive engine,” Bow says. “Do you have any sanitized patients?”

“A few, I think, what of it?”

“Not any more, you don’t,” Peekablue says.

They get washed down in antiseptic, which takes care of the gunk too.

Then the nurses approach; three human women in scrubs, also with buddy-bots.

“This clone here is Wrodak, resistance member; you’ve probably heard of him,” Peekablue says, gesturing to Wrodak, supporting himself on Glimmer’s shoulder. “He’s been shot with a Toha-Zev; Bow here closed the wound with a sealant.”

One of the nurses has her buddy-bot take over supporting Wrodak, and she inspects the hole in his suit.

“And her?” another of the nurses ask, pointing to Sweet Bee.

“Dark Magic gone wrong. She needs bed rest, a brain scan, and…” He trails off. He looks up at Bow. “Tell everyone we did it. We won,” he says without mirth.

“The rest of us are unhurt,” Bow says to the nurse. “Peekablue, stay here with Sweet Bee and Wrodak; We’ll call you if we need anything.”

Then he takes Glimmer’s hand, and they blink out.

All that’s left to do now is mop up and hope.

* * *

They arrive in an ice trench dugout, empty.

“This is Captain Bow; General Lonnie, come in, General,” Bow says over comms.

“ _I read you, Captain,_ ” Lonnie’s reply comes.

“Hive engine and wasp network successfully destroyed. I repeat, sanitization is over!”

“ _Yes!_ ” Lonnie exclaims. “ _Fucking amazing! I’ll be sure word gets out._ ”

“Is someone down there, I heard voices—” Castaspella says, coming down the stairs into the artificial ice cavern. “Glimmer! Bow!”

“Hey aunt Casta!” Glimmer says, taking off the anti-wasp emblem adorned with the Apierian bee. “It’s over! No more wasps!” She flips up her visor and takes a deep breath. “ _Wow,_ that’s cold!”

“Did they really—?” Castaspella asks, looking at Bow.

“I mean, we should wait for confirmation from Nebularia, but… Peekablue said so; and he’s right about most things. I’m inclined to believe him,” Bow says.

“Well, I can tell you the fighting hasn’t stopped,” Castaspella says. “But the sortie from the underground base has halted its advance. They seem to be holding positions. And the triple-clones are still giving the Runestone corps trouble.”

Glimmer looks at Bow. “I have to go help them,” she says.

“I’ll try to figure out what’s going on, keep you updated,” Bow says.

* * *

“Call the astry back into low orbit; the artificial intellect in charge of the orbital defenses has lost access to its targeting systems.”

“Right away, sire.”

Entrapta follows meekly behind Prime, as they head down the corridor. Prime has fetched an actual portable communications device, and fitted himself with an earpiece, and has been giving orders non-stop for the last few minutes.

Several loyal clones in acolyte garb have fall in step with them, and Prime has begun delegating administrative tasks to them.

Entrapta is not even close to a full understanding of statecraft, but being married to a master of the art for ten years, she has picked up bits and pieces.

What Prime is doing, is turning his cult-empire into an authoritarian dictatorship. In double tempo.

They reach an elevator bank, from where the spine of the ship can be accessed.

Then Prime stops.

“ _Interesting,_ ” he says.

Then he turns to Entrapta, and Hordak’s red eyes turn green. Two additional eyes open up on the right side of his face, one on his brow and one on his cheek.

He turns to one of the clones. “Call an orbit strike on the resistance.”

“But what about the Runestone wielders?!” Entrapta protests.

Prime turns to look at her with a wuthering malice. “They are superfluous to the Heart’s operation, and formidable opponents; now that I cannot sanitize them, I cannot allow them to live if I am not absolutely forced to. Which I am not.”

“And me?”

“My acquisition of the Heart is not complete; we will operate as though the universe will continue to exist for the foreseeable future. You still need to build me that hive engine.”

Entrapta closes her eyes and balls her bare hands into fists. _Sorry._

* * *

Scorpia’s aerial battle is visible for miles around, punctuated by lightning strikes stretching into the sky.

Glimmer blinks into the sky and spots the swarm of triple clones. A trio of them take off from the mass, carrying a figure. Frosta in her power-suit. Netossa’s tethers lash out from the ground, preventing their escape, bringing them down. By the time they reach the ground, the clones are are developing a nice searing.

Frosta ejects from her damaged suit, unbothered by the cold; Her last buddy-bot races up to her, ejecting from its own suit; Frosta ejects from her own, and directly into the spare.

_They’re trying to capture us._

Explosions tear through the air where Spinnerella works her fuel-air mixtures. Huntara erects cover, throws boulders and lets the stone underfoot swallow clones whole. Mermista struggles to make an impact against the clones which are rapidly becoming bulletproof and somehow turning their blood into something that isn’t water. Netossa immobilizes them by the dozens.

Perfuma and Cometa are fighting in the open, back to back, two giants of metal and plant.

Glimmer tries to ignore her headache.

Then, reaching wide, she casts a gigantic spell circle; a slight modification of the clone-disabling spell developed by Sweet Bee.

Purple light draws a circle miles wide, and as the spell takes hold, the triple-clones slow noticeable in their movements.

“Everyone, to me! Now!” Glimmer yells over comms, and the eight Runestone Wielders all make haste towards her position.

Scorpia blasts through a veritable ball of clones dog-piling her. Spinnerella flies at bullet-speeds to Netossa, picking her up by a tether. Mermista gives Huntara a lift with her antifreeze-solution on a slab of rock. Cometa’s colossus and Perfuma’s plant dragon hang back long enough for Frosta to catch up.

The clones follow, but the airborne ones slow and land; soon all of them are jogging languidly over the uneven terrain

Everyone clears the circle, and Glimmer changes it, overlaying a containment spell, and carving the glyphs into the ground.

“There,” she says, landing among the others. A trickle of blood runs from her nose, and her head feels like it is about to split open.

“Thank you for the assist, Queen Glimmer.” Scorpia says.

Glimmer waves.

“With those out of the way,” Scorpia says, “we should really go and assist at the front. The infantry has it handled on the drill-side, or so I hear, but the advancing army from the underground base is worrying me. We should make a pre-emptive strike there.”

Frosta points up. “What’s going on up there?”

Green flashes litter the sky.

“Portal engine signatures,” Glimmer says, squinting. “The Horde astry is coming back to low orbit.”

A craft comes down — a hologram-projector spire, with a great big dome mounted on top — landing in a suicide burn maneuver a few miles off.

Then the horizon lights up in green coming down from the sky. A wave of green spears lance into the ground, then another in front of it. And another. A carpet bombing of the entire valley. Boulders the size of houses fly into the air under the force of the onslaught.

“ _Orbital strike!_ ” Netossa yells.

“ _No portals!_ ” Spinnerella adds. “ _Run!_ ”

Glimmer blinks away.

Mermista picks Huntara up, bodily, and races off for the mountains. Spinnerella and Netossa link up by tether and she speeds off like a bullet. Perfuma plunges an enormous claw into Cometa’s colossus and rips the girl out; picks up Frosta with another claw, and throws both into the sky, wrapped in ropes made from vines.

Scorpia blasts after them, catching both and powering away on a streak of light.

The gigantic spell circles are interrupted, and the clones all rise into the sky with all haste, hoping to slip between the beams of energy and escape the explosions.

Perfuma turns to the waves of green energy, and prepares mentally.

Her war form and the remains of the colossus are torn asunder in an instant.

* * *

She emerges from a tree in the forest, unscathed but with the memory of pain vividly at the forefront of her mind. She is on the brink of starvation, bone chillingly cold, and intensely in need of human contact. She is also miles from anywhere one can procure a communicator.

* * *

Bow sees the oncoming wave of destruction and runs for the dugout, grabbing Castaspella and Micah on the way — saving what he can — calling for a portal only to learn they are under suppression.

Then there’s a puff of light, and he catches a glimpse of Glimmer, touching him. And then he’s underground. Safe and sound. “Glimmer!” he yells.

* * *

They make it to the mountains and avoid the first wave of destruction. Huntara carves them a cave to hide in. Frosta is fine, despite the manhandling. Cometa has lost consciousness from her power-induced anemia and the sudden acceleration.

“What about Perfuma!?” Frosta yells.

“She’ll be fine,” Scorpia says. “How are we looking on getting a portal out of here?”

“Still suppressed,” Spinnerella notes.

Netossa throws a small spy drone out, and directs it up. “That spire is still standing. I bet it’s what’s preventing portals.”

“I’ll go,” Scorpia says. “If they call another carpet bombardment, hiding in a cave won’t help. We’ll need to return to the swift wind and take the fight to Prime… Or something; I don’t know. I just know we can’t stay here.”

“You’ll get killed,” Mermista notes. “The triple-clones are back; they’ll hold you down and one of the spacecraft up top will shoot you.”

Scorpia smiles. “I like my chances of surviving that; and besides, they’ll have to catch me first. Once you can, portal out of here… If I fail… Huntara, you have seniority.”

Huntara gives her a salute.

Scorpia flies off on a cushion of plasma.

Netossa shares the view of her streaking off in the distance like a bolt of lightning, towards the tower. Little white dots in the night move to intercept her.  
She reaches the tower.

Then there’s the barest little flash of green, and night turns to day.

The drone’s camera sensor burns out; it’s backup activates.

A dull-red mushroom cloud rises from the middle of the tundra plain.

The boom reaches them, utterly deafening.

They all stare at the image from the feed in stunned silence.

“Do— do you think there’s any chance she survived that?” Frosta asks.

Huntara calls a portal. This time it works. “Let’s go.”

* * *

Unlike on Krytis, the Etherian Heart chamber is bathed in iridescent hues. The very air feels energized; even through the suits.

Adora lands on the art-grav walkway and collapses, grunting in pain.

“What’s the damage?” Shadow Weaver asks.

“Broken leg. It didn’t happen now.”

“You’ve been running around, fighting Prime on a _broken leg._ ”

Shadow Weaver helps her up. Adora forms Halcyon into a pair of long crutches, and bids her suit to immobilize her knee; the transformation speed of the shape shifting weapon is slowing.

They make haste along the walkway, which stretches only a few hundred yards into the center cavity of the planet.

There, at the very center, hangs the Heart. An impossible object of magical geometry closer to an act of divinity than mortal works, on a scale from one to the other; and surpassing divinity to boot. Tori within tori; cubes within cubes. Space folding in on itself at the speed of light; unfolding like a lotus at the pace of time passing.

“I can feel the Failsafe; it wants to activate,” Adora says, clutching her chest. “But without She-Ra, I’ll just die; I can feel that too. It’s too much.”

“Hold it off for now,” Shadow Weaver says. “I’ll see if there’s anything we can do.”

She flicks up her visor, draws the heptagram-circle around her remaining good eye, accepting the burden of blindness in exchange for clarity.

She stands there for a moment, ‘regarding’ the Heart. So close, yet so far. Her mind racing with possibilities, using what little time she has left before the toll of her last eye proves insufficient.

“Well?” Adora asks. “Are you going to cast a spell?”

Shadow Weaver shakes her head.

“There’s nothing I can do. No way to mitigate the rebound of the reversal; not in the time we have. Even taking the Failsafe onto myself would not be sufficient; it would kill me to, obtainer or no.”

There’s a flicker of shadow, and Catra collapses on the floor. Bane falls from her hand, extended into a wicked spear with a forked tip. She shivers; her eyes are black pits.

“Catra!” Adora falls to her good knee and crawls up to her.

“I can’t hold him off any longer,” she says. “I can’t see anything anymore.”

Adora takes Catra’s large gloved hand in hers.

“And I can’t access the starlight,” Adora says. “Prime did something to me.”

Catra smiles. “At least we’re not dying down here alone.”

“We’re not dead yet,” Shadow Weaver says. She takes out a knife and carves a slit in her forehead, and from the wound, a red eye with cross-shaped pupil emerges. “Let’s not consign ourselves to our fate until we meet it.”

There’s a crushing sound in the distance. Adora and Shadow Weaver both look to where they came in. Prime squeezes his gigantic reptilian form through the narrow access hatch. He lands onto the art-grav platform like a sack of disjointed bones, having had to dislocate virtually everything to fit through.

“By the sound of it, that’s not far off,” Catra says.

“Interesting,” Shadow Weaver says, watching the grisly display of Prime putting himself back together.

“What?” Adora asks.

“That’s not Prime. It’s am arch-demon he’s controlling.”

“Can you do anything about that?” Adora asks.

“Not before he kills us, no.”

Catra chuckles. “What good does knowing physics do, if when you fall from a cliff, all you can do is calculate how long it takes before you hit the ground?”

Prime turns upright, and begins advancing down the walkway.

Then Shadow Weaver gestures, and the entire scene stops. A full-moon hangs in front of her hand, and on its edge, a sliver of shadow appears as it wanes to gibbous.

“What did you do?” Adora asks.

“I stopped time for us,” Shadow Weaver says.

“How?”

“It costs me a decade of life per minute; if I recall my actuarial tables, that should give us two or three.”

“Why?” Catra asks.

“Because we might think of a way to win in that time,” she says. “And we were all about to die anyway.”

Adora looks down at Catra. Then she reaches for Halcyon, which flows into her hand like quicksilver; at a languid pace. It forms a ball.

She holds it up over Catra, and opens it on a hinge. A single brilliant mote of starlight falls out, landing on Catra’s chest.

Halcyon is left inert, losing its lustre and turning from gold to grey.

“Thanks,” Catra says, rubbing her eyes. “I can see a little again.”

“You’re welcome,” Adora says, caressing her face. “Thanks for coming back to me.”

“Girls,” Shadow Weaver says, turning to them.

They look at her; two blind white eyes and an angry third on in the forehead. Shadow Weaver conjures an illusion of the mask she used to wear, once; just for modesty. Then she sits down.

“I think this is where I get off.” Her hair is beginning to grey.

“What?” Catra says, propping herself up.

“I know how I can buy you more time,” Shadow Weaver says. “But… It’s going to kill me.”

“No!” Adora says. “What are you talking about—”

“She’s dead anyway,” Catra says. “Either Prime wins and we _all_ die, or we win, and…”

Shadow Weaver nods. “A short drop and a sudden stop. That was the deal, was it not? I’d rather die on my own terms, doing something _useful._ ”

Adora and Catra exchange a glance.

“Over the last few days; even over the last hour, I’ve come to realize a few things.”

“Like what, that you were a shit foster parent?” Catra says.

"Among other things. I don’t want you to remember me fondly. I don’t want you to give me the indignity of ascribing me a desire for redemption. I don’t want posthumous honors.

“I made my choices, I have long since found peace with my errors. I stand by my actions. But… I’m done. You can’t teach an old horse new tricks.”

She stands. “Even if those hypocrites decide to pardon me, I don’t want another forty years of… This.” She gestures to herself. “Especially not in a world that has no need for unscrupulous dark sorceresses.”

She staggers a little. An entire lock of hair goes pure white. “Huh. This spell is costing me more than I thought; I’m going to have to cut it short.”

“Shadow Weaver—” Adora says, tears welling up unbidden and unwanted.

She turns to face Prime. “You two girls; promise me you figure out how to save the universe. Not for me, but for yourself. Okay?”

Catra wipes her eyes.

Shadow Weaver tilts her head to one side, and her neck cracks audibly. She rolls her shoulders. “Come and get it you green bastard.”

The moon vanishes.

Prime strides forth, then stops. Looking for a moment. “Odd. A spell? No matter. Let’s end this, shall we?” he says, and gestures.

Adora screams in pain, clutching her shoulder.

“No!” Catra yells.

Shadow Weaver kicks off at a dead sprint towards Prime.

“ _Leave my girls be!_ ” she yells.

She leaps into the air, and her suit and flesh is torn asunder in an explosion of gore. Out of the cloud of blood mist, an obtainer tumbles towards Prime; bare-laid muscle and sinew, dripping hemolymph, fingers tapering into bone daggers, eyes and eyes and eyes.

With ten hands it grabs Prime, and pummels him with another five. The two giant monsters claw at each other in a fast-paced wrestle, snarling and bellowing, then tumble over the side of the walkway; falling below it despite the absence of gravity.

Silence. Catra crawls over to look over the edge, finding nothing.

Adora collapses, and Catra crawls back to her, forces herself upright despite her injuries. and pulls Adora into her arms. She’s so small, now, compared to Catra’s bulk.

“What did he do?” she asks. “Adora, talk to me.” She pushes the release on Adora’s helmet, and pulls it off, discarding it. She does the same with her own.

“Ad, please.”

Adora opens her eyes. Up her neck, green light snakes its way through her veins. “ _He got me, Cat,_ ” she croaks.

The sigil on her chest glows; growing in intensity. Adora winces, and her breathing quickens.

“What now?!” Catra asks.

“ _I can’t hold it back,_ ” she mutters. “ _The Failsafe, it’s—_ ” She groans in pain — she hasn’t the strength left to scream.

Catra looks at Adora. “No,” she says. “No, if anyone has to die here, it’s not going to be you.”

The last of her darkness wreathes itself around her hand, and ever so carefully, she moves her fingers under the sigil. She begins lifting, and it comes away from Adora.

Adora’s hand closes around Catra’s wrist. “ _No!_ ” she says.

“Adora! I’m not going to let you die for nothing!” Catra says. “Please!” The tears come now.

“ _Catra, it might not work for you,_ ” Adora says, strained. “ _And if it doesn’t, we both die. You—_ ” she groans in pain “ _— you have to destroy the heart, make sure._ ” Weakly she points to bane, lying a few feet away.

“But— then what about Etheria? Our friends? If I hurl Bane at that thing, it’s all going to blow up!”

The multi-hued lighting gradually turns green.

“ _Theres —_ ” Adora coughs “ _— no more time._ ”

On her chest, the Failsafe glows brighter and brighter, and then flickers. Green hues spread into it like dye spilt on fabric.

“ _Oh no,_ ” Adora mutters. “ _Cat, I’m so sorr—_ ”

Then her eyes roll back, and she starts convulsing.

“Adora!” Catra screams. “No! No! Don’t leave me here! _Please!_ ”

* * *

“Change of plans,” Prime says, stopping. “I win,” he says, then aside to one of his aides, “prepare to broadcast.” The clone nods, and hurries off to a nearby room, returning shortly with tow devices on a tripod.

Setting them up, Prime takes position between the two of them.

* * *

" _Rejoice Etheria, for your world shall become the nexus of the ever-lasting era of peace heralded by Prime. You have chosen darkness, and for that you shall be rewarded in accordance._

" _Your ancestors, the Eternians, saw fit to build a weapon that could not only destroy the universe, but remake it. To them, I am grateful. My greatest fear has always been that I would never be able to spread my peace and light to all the universe; for all who desire it, does so rightly deserve it._

" _When I learned of your world and its weapon, I was faced with the choice between achieving my goal in part and preserving life to live in peace; or achieving my goal in full, by the peace of the void. I was prepared to choose the latter…_

“ _Until today. The universe shall not end in fire; nor in ice; nor even bathed in my lignt. No, the universe shall be_ remade _in my image. All shall be peace, and all shall be Prime._ ”

Bow runs along the rubble, the indicator clear on his visor. His heart gallops, and cold sweat runs down his brow. There is only the distance and bearing, and the ominous message.

> `Negative vitals.`

Fortunately, she’s outside the blast radius of the bomb that Scorpia— he pushes the thought away. He leaps onto the lip of a crater, and then he finds her.

Glimmer.

Her visor is cracked. Her torso armor looks like it took the fragments from a howitzer shell.

Her wings are singed and bent wrong.

Her left leg, from about the mid thigh down is… Gone. There’s a spell circle sealing the wound.

Her right is crushed under a boulder.

There’s a lot of blood. Most of it is already frozen.

“Shit,” he mutters.

Working quickly, he flicks up her visor, throws off his glove, exposing his hand to the freezing cold, and takes her pulse.

There, but weak.

“ _Oh thank the stars,_ ” he mutters. The vitals monitor must have gotten damaged.

Working quickly, he takes stock of the boulder. It is large, and thankfully not part of a larger slide; it seems to have fallen where it lies.

He calls a portal, and is served one promptly. From the other side, a buddy-bot emerges walking with rote movements, linking itself to Bow’s headband and immediately falling into more fluid gestures.

Checking the servos in his suit, her braces against the boulder, and strains. A lever would be preferable, but that risks jostling the stone and crushing her leg worse.

Bow lets out a bellow and probably pulls something, but the damn stone moves, and the buddy-bot quickly pulls Glimmer free — there’s only to hope she hasn’t broken her back.

He lets the stone fall again, and ignores the pain. “I need MEDEVAC at my location,” he says. “Anyone?”

No answer.

He calls a portal manually, into the triage area.

Bedlam. There’s hundreds and hundreds of wounded, if not thousands. There’s wounded and dead on every available surface.

“I have a casualty here,” he says.

A nurse passing stops and looks her over. “Grave. Put her in the red zone. We’ll get to you.”

“She’s dying!” Bow protests.

“Half the people in here are,” she says, and continues.

Then there’s an earthquake. The whole triage area rumbles, and the lights flicker. Dust falls from the ceiling.

The world is ending. And yet as soon as it becomes apparent the roof isn’t going to cave in, the everyone resumes working, trying their best to steady their hands against the shaking.

* * *

Catra checks her pulse.

Nothing.

She holds a hand in front of Adora’s mouth. No breath.

A sob escapes her lips. “I lied,” she says quietly. “It’s not courage. It’s love. My darkness comes from love.”

Gently she lets Adora down to lie on the floor, and her legs protest as she stands.

Her backhand picks up bane and brings it to her left hand.

“Fuck you, Prime,” she mutters, and raises the spear, preparing to throw it and end the world.

Out of the corner of her eye, she sees the Failsafe glyph.

_A living mind and soul must carry it to the Heart._

The Bane falls to the ground, clattering, and Catra pulls Adora’s apparently lifeless body into her arms.

“Please work,” she mutters.

Then, she lets herself love.

She plunges herself into that terrifying void in her mind from which darkness flows.

The terror didn’t go away when she accepter herself as a creature lurking in darkness. It didn’t go away when she ran. It’s not gone away now, that… Now, at the end of the world, she can finally let herself love.

But she has to anyway. There’s no use in running away anymore.

The green light of the corrupted Heart above vanishes, replaced by the yawning void.

* * *

Adora looks herself in the mirror, and adjusts her tiara, tucking a stray strand of hair back under it, and being careful not to disturb the pompadour complementing her ponytail. She checks her red gala uniform jacket, and smoothes a crease in the skirt of her white dress. It’s very… Formal. Modest. Hearkening to her military background.

This is after all a celebration of the peace treaty. (Glimmer protested at _length_ that she should wear something more daring. At least, she took her advice on the booties. Then she broke out the perfume, and Adora had to put her foot down.)

The door to the changing room bursts open, and Catra darts in. She’s foregone all reason and modesty, and have somehow found a pair of cavalry jackboots — despite never having served on horseback — grey riding pants that just _oh_ so accentuates her thighs and hips, a double-breasted uniform jacket with gold filigree in an even _brighter red,_ than Adora’s and a white _half-cape_ draped over one shoulder.

Her face is framed by that burgundy Magicat warrior’s forehead protector, and her hair is a mess.

Glimmer storms in after her, wings flaring, hairbrush in hand. “Catra!” She yells, mirth in her voice. Her elaborate ball gown does nothing to impede her chasing Catra.

“Adora! Save me!” Catra yells, giggling. She runs up and hides behind Adora, physically.

“Just let me brush it! You can’t seriously be thinking of going with _bedhead!_ ” Glimmer says.

Bow enters. His tuxedo is immaculate, and somehow goes remarkably well with the cloak; his beard is well-trimmed, and his long curls are put up in a neat bun. “Girls, we’re running _late._ This is Scorpia’s big day as hostess, and she can’t even drink through the stress; if we don’t show up on time, she’s going to roast us on a spit.”

Glimmer throws the brush to Adora, who almost fumbles catching it. “Fine! Adora, you’re the expert on herding cats. Make sure your wife’s hair doesn’t look like you were banging her in the wardrobe.”

Catra gasps, then sticks out her tongue at Glimmer.

Glimmer kicks off and glides across the room, into Bow’s arms, kissing him. Her hand comes to rest on her belly as she does. Then they leave Catra and Adora alone.

Catra grabs the brush from Adora’s hand, and quickly works her hair through, then grabs a band and does it up in a ponytail. She notices Adora staring. “What?”

“Nothing,” Adora says, and smiles.

Catra holds out her elbow, smiling back. "You coming?’

Adora goes to link arms with her, and then…

Catra dissolves into ash.

Adora recoils in horror.

The whole room seems to melt away, replaced by a starfield tinted green.

“ _A beautiful wish,_ ” Prime’s voice sounds. “ _But there can be no future. Not for you. Not for anyone._ ”

And then, there’s only agony. Each green star becomes a needle piercing her flesh.  


* * *

  
She remains there for an eternity. Agony. Regret. Sorrow.  


* * *

“ _Adora!_ ”

Adora opens her eyes, and sees the stars wink out, one by one. Each of them occluded by the void, each of them a needle no longer inflicting her pain.

Faster and faster.

Then as the last of them wink out, a figure appears; as if the darkness itself forms into a person. And from that…

“Catra!” Adora says.

The darkness splits like skin pullet too taut, and through the crack comes warm light, and _Catra._ Sweet, wonderful, beautiful Catra, clawing her way through.

“ _Ad! Please! You have to wake up!_ ”

Her voice feels like it is coming from miles away.

“ _Don’t you_ dare _give up! You’ve never given up on_ anything _in your life!_ ”

Adora smiles, bittersweetly.

“ _You never gave up on me! Even when I gave up on myself. So don’t you dare start now!_ ”

“It’s too late, Cat,” Adora whispers. “I failed.”

“ _Do you think I care about that?!_ ”

Catra struggles. She rips and tears at the darkness, letting more light through, and more of herself. With a tremendous effort of strength, she gets most of her torso through the break, and extends a long strong armor-clad arm; gloveless.

Green tendrils emerge from the break, lashing onto Catra, attempting to pull her away.

“ _Take my hand!_ ”

Adora reaches out; she’s weightless here, there’s nothing to push against. She comes short by mere inches.

Catra strains against the green strands. She’s being pulled back.

“Catra—” Adora says.

Catra hammers her fist into the darkness, breaking it wide open. Light floods in.

“Don’t you get it?! I love you!” Catra yells, her voice no longer muffled. Tears stream down her cheeks. "I _always have._ So please!

She lunges forwards, hand outstretched, and Adora does the same.

“Just this once!”

Their fingers touch, and link; Catra pulls her in, grasping her hand.

“Stay!”

And then with another pull, Catra grabs around Adora’s forearm. With a mighty heave, she pulls Adora up, even as the green tendrils pulls her away, grasping Adora by the shoulder, and bringing her close until their foreheads touch.  


* * *

Adora draws a deep breath. Her eyes flutter open. Around them is complete blackness; they are the only two people in the universe.

She looks at Catra, and with her strength gradually returning, reaches a trembling hand up to wipe away her tears.

“You… You love me?”

Catra giggles. “You’re such an idiot.”

Adora smiles. “I love you too,” she says.

Catra’s blushing look of surprise is so earnestly adorable.

Then she puts her hand behind her neck and pulls _her Catra_ into a tender kiss.

And then starlight returns to her.


	25. Hope, Vengeance

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cw: body horror, death, injury

Hope appears in-the-flesh, next to Damara in the control center.

“`It's over. Prime has the Heart.`”

“It’s not over ’till it’s over, Hope.”

“`You've left the swarm to its automated systems.`”

“I’m tired. I’ve been a drone swarm for six hours now.”

“`Liar. You're a construct, like me. We don't get tired.`”

Damara looks away from the wallscreens showing the open sky, overlooking the coast of the Southern Reach.

“`It's okay, Damara. We tried.`”

Hope pats her on the back.

Damara bends down and pulls Hope into a hug. “I’m sorry, Hope.”

“`What for?`”

“I made you to fight this war with me, and now we’ve lost.”

Hope pushes away. “`That's okay. Being alive for a little while beats being dead.`”

Damara steps back, but keeps holding Hope’s hand.

“Thanks for the good fight,” she says.

Hope smiles and gives her hand a squeeze.

Then they turn to see the world end.

“`Wait. Something is not right.`”

Damara calls out to her swarm, computing aggregate meta-measurements. “It’s… Gone.”

“`What?`”

“The Heart! They did it!”

Laughing in elation, Damara swoops Hope up into a hug and swings the little enby around.

“`They did it!`” Hope repeats. “`We're not going to die!`” they laugh in a melodic timbre.

Then Damara stops, and lets Hope down, as the implications hit her. “Adora…” she says.

Hope’s smile vanishes. “`Oh no.`”

* * *

The tremors stop. Bow doesn’t care much; he sits there, next to Glimmer, holding her hand.

Absent proper medical attention, he has taken it on himself to make sure she doesn’t perish. He has procured a can of wound sealant and stopped the bleeding at least.

Turns out the fragmentation damage was caused by rocks alone, so he spent nearly ten minutes picking shards of flint out of Glimmer’s torso. She’ll have scars. The spell on her leg stump is holding up, but he has half the can of sealant on hand if need be. Her other leg is a write-off; and will likely need amputation. That’s not the worst part. What he’s most worried about is the head injury from the blow that cracked her visor. Those things are bulletproof.

For now she sleeps under his cloak for modesty.

The air in here smells like death. Iron. Vomit. Shit. Decay. Antiseptic. Sweat. He thinks of the forest, trying to forget where he is. It doesn’t help.

“Call Angella,” he says to his communicator.

No answer.

“Call Micah.”

No answer.

He tries everyone he can think of. Scorpia, Huntara, Perfuma, Mermista, Juliet, Castaspella, Nightshade… He begins to suspect his communicator is broken, when Peekablue calls him.

“ _Hey man,_ ” Peekablue says. “ _Sorry about your fiancé; don’t worry, she’ll pull through. Angel blood; you know how it is._ ”

Bow really doesn’t. He’s just worried sick.

“ _Good news though. They did it. That’s why the earthquake stopped._ ”

“Who did what?”

“ _Adora. Down below. With the Failsafe._ ”

“Oh. So that means…”

“ _I’m afraid so._ ”

Bow nods, and then he starts crying.

“ _It’s not over yet. We’ll need to regroup, see who made it. The clones are out there, and Prime is still kicking, even if his command structure has been crippled—_ ”

“Peekablue,” Bow says, “not right now, man.”

“ _Okay. Sorry._ ”

The call cuts out.

Bow isn’t sure how long he sits there, crying. Long enough that a doctor — an aging satyr with a big bushy beard — comes over to look Glimmer over; notes her pulse and breathing look good, worries about the spell on her leg, then classifies her as ‘stable,’ and moves on.

* * *

Adora breaks the kiss, pulling back. She feels… Light. Whole. Giddy. Elated, even. It feels as though she has to keep the Starlight _at bay._

Catra opens her eyes. Her brilliant blue eye, full of Melog’s power; and the yellow — just as brilliant?

“You’re big again!” Catra exclaims.

Adora looks down herself; indeed she is back to She-Ra, seven feet tall.

“You have freckles! And a tan!”

“What?” Adora asks.

Catra procures a mirror. And indeed, Adora looks like she did after that summer of boot camp; the deep solid tan someone as pale as her gets when spending every day under the Hordelands’ searing sun.

Adora turns the mirror on Catra. “Your eye is glowing!”

“What?!” Catra says, inspecting herself. Indeed, her yellow eye — the ‘normal’ eye — now exudes a subtle radiance, much like the blue has done since she gained Melog’s power.

“Your hair!” Adora says, noticing it. The jet black unruly nest of a man Catra calls her hair is no longer just that, black. There’s an unmistakable texture to it, like the canvas of space, dotted in stars. Like Glimmer sometimes does hers with an illusion spell — only this is a true image, as the dots of light move in parallax.

Catra starts laughing, and Adora does too. A laugh of relief and elation.

Then there’s an ear-pounding hum, and the green light in the room pulses menacingly. From the Heart above, an energetic discharge lashes out, randomly in all directions; but one arc of plasma heads directly for the two of them.

Adora holds up a hand and Stella Nova leaps into the air, its veil of silk blocking the wave of energy without even wavering.

“We have to do something about that,” Adora says. She looks down at her sternum where the Failsafe glyph still sits. “I’m going to activate this thing,” she says.

“Adora—”

“I’m not going to die, Catra. I can feel it. Just trust me.”

Catra nods.

Adora blushes. “And… Do you think you can kiss me again while I do it?”

That, Catra can do. She closes her eyes, and the distance between their lips, and in the blinding radiance from Adora, her shadow stretches out to infinity, black as a gravitational singularity.

One kiss turns to two; Adora’s hand is in her hair; her own hand finds Adora’s waist and pulls her close, and it all feels _so right._

Adora’s hand runs down Catra’s neck to the collar of her armor, and she tugs at it in vain, wishing it wasn’t there.

Catra draws back, face flush, breaths shallow. Adora’s on her back on the walkway, and Catra has one knee between her legs.

Then they both notice the change. The chamber is no longer bathed in green light. The enormous spherical chamber at the center of the planet is cast in twilight.

“It’s gone,” Adora says.

They both look up at the space that was just before a magical artifact of universe-ending power.

Then Catra bursts out laughing.

“What?” Adora asks.

“We saved the universe!” she says. “With _foreplay!_ ”

Adora blushes _hard._ “Well, when you put it _that way…_ ” She crosses her arms; which serves only to accentuate her chest.

Catra laughs and wipes her eye. “Sorry. Here, let me slip into something more comfortable, and we’ll pick up where we left off if you’re still in the mood.” With a flicker of darkness, her armor vanishes, replaced by her usual outfit.

The one with oh so many joints one could slip a hand into…

“No,” Adora says.

“No?” Catra asks, surprised. “Ad, I’m sorry if—”

Adora shakes her head. “There’s a war going on. We might have saved the universe, but our friends are still fighting up there. I promise you, when we’ve _won—_ ”

“You’ll let me ravage you?” Catra says, rolling the ‘r’.

“You’re awful.” Adora blushes. “I’d love it. Now get off!”

Catra leaps to her feet and stretches — Adora has to take her eyes away by force and focus on getting up herself.

“Let’s hurry. Are you coming?” Catra asks and holds out a hand.

Adora takes it.

Then Catra _runs,_ pulling Adora along so fast her legs can barely keep up; down the walkway to the point where Shadow Weaver and Prime’s demon form tumbled off; Catra swoops Adora into a bridal carry and leaps into the chasm below.

* * *

Catra lands gently on a dark stone floor that seems familiar in make; in a large circular room lined with columns and centered on a large scrying pool.

“Mystacor?” Adora says.

There’s a noise behind them; a rasping, wet breath.

They turn to see… Something. Half dead, discorporated, actively falling apart. There’s too many limbs and too many bones; eyes in places there shouldn’t be. The skinless mass rises and falls slowly, breathing.

“Look over there,” Catra says, pointing to the side.

There, in between the columns, lies a lizard-like corpse, torn asunder. Skin flayed off muscle; bones ground to meal; viscera reduced to pie filling. Four crystalline green eyes plucked from their sockets and thrown against the walls, shattering.

“She did it. She killed Prime,” Adora notes.

“Not the real Prime, but yeah.”

Then they look back at what’s left of Shadow Weaver.

“We can’t just leave her like this,” Adora says.

“That’s not her anymore,” Catra says. “I can feel it. It’s barely even alive; just aware enough to…” She draws Bane and grows it into the bident spear.

Adora puts a hand on her wrist. “Really? Mercy kill?”

“She’s dead, Adora. This is a mindless beast. I’m putting it out of its misery.”

Adora looks at Catra. There’s no malice in her face.

“Okay.”

Catra plunges the spear into the blob, and it shudders, then stops moving. The eyes stop twitching to and fro.

Then the scene fades entirely, and they are standing at the bottom of the shaft that leads back to the surface.

“I can get us back up with Halcyon, but it might take a while,” Adora says.

“Adora,” Catra says. She takes her hand and gives it a squeeze. “You’re being silly.”

Then she walks backwards into the shadows, gently dragging Adora along with her.

* * *

Lonnie sits down.

Angella puts a hand on her shoulder. “Well done, General.”

“It’s not over.”

“No, but your command has given the universe a fighting chance once more.”

Lonnie leans her head back against the back of the chair. “Could you give the full retreat order?”

* * *

They emerge on top of Dagon Rock, in the twilight. Adora breathes in the forest air for the first time in weeks, and realizes how much she’s missed it. A leisurely stroll seems close by now; tantalizingly so.

“All right, let’s start solving some crises,” Catra says. “The sooner we get done, the better.” She gives Adora’s hand a loving squeeze.

Adora puts a hand to her earpiece, courtesy Halcyon. “This is Captain Adora, She-Ra, with Lieutenant Catra, Melog, of the Starlight Brigade. Calling General Lonnie: we’re back, and better than ever. Who needs help?”

“ _Holy shit! Uh —_ ”

“ _Adora?!_ ” Damara sounds in their earpieces. “ _The Horde is jumping in ships; I think they’re planning an orbital bombardment, you need to take care of that while Hope re-establishes her anti-orbit capabilities!_ ”

“Then that’s what we’ll do,” Adora says.

She looks at Catra. “Let’s see what I can do now.”

Raising a hand to the sky, Adora calls on Parabell.

And in response, the entire sky fills with thirty-foot javelins. With another gesture, they fly off in every which direction; streaks of light.

“There,” Adora says.

“Really?” Catra says.

“ _Adora? What did you just do?_ ” Damara asks. “ _I just lost contact with all the orbiting craft I was tracking._ ”

“I did what you asked; now we’re going to take care of Prime,” Adora says.

* * *

“No!” Prime says, rising from his throne.

Entrapta flinches.

“There has to be some mistake! This _cannot be,_ why— how could they possibly.” He rubs his forehead and begins pacing. “This will _not_ stand.” He turns to his aides. “Give the order. Full planetary bombardment. I want this _disgrace_ of a world laid _barren._ ”

“Right away, sire,” the aide says and hurries off.

“They did it,” Entrapta says. “They destroyed the heart.”

“Yes, and for that, they have sealed their fate.”

Prime turns to regard the screens. The Velvet Glove is accelerating now, heading for synchronous orbit once more; no longer part of the ‘safe passage’ down to the surface.

“You’re never going to win,” Entrapta says.

“Nonsense,” Prime replies. “I _always_ win.”

“You don’t understand what makes us strong.”

“I do not need to understand _what,_ just _how to break it,_ ” Prime replies.

Entrapta turns and walks off.

“Who gave you leave?” Prime asks.

“What are you going to do? Torture me? That’ll make it difficult for me to build you a hive engine.”

Prime sneers at her, then goes back to watching the screens.

Entrapta finds a piece of equipment to sit on, and starts thinking. She’s going to have to think her way out of this one, somehow. There’s armed guards in here now; and she doesn’t have any tech. Hordak would be perfect for this task—

“What?” Prime says. “That can’t be right; I want a full re-evaluation of our telemetry.”

“Sire, everything seems in order,” a technician says.

“The _entire_ attacking orbitelle just went dark. That cannot possibly be anything other than an equipment malfunction. Fix. It.” Prime says.

“ _It’s not a malfunction,_ ” A voice says.

Everyone in the room turns to see.

From the shadows, Catra and Adora step forth, holding hands.

Several rifles are leveled at them, and Adora’s shield springs into action as the dozen armed guards open fire on them to no avail. A dozen guns run empty, and two dozen hands fumble with rifles and magazines.

“I want triple-clones in here to take care of these nuisances; and if that doesn’t work, space them,” Prime orders; just speaking to the room.

But nobody replies.

Prime looks about, and sees the aide next to him being held on the pate by a shadowy hand, with a blade pressed against its throat. The assailant is ill-defined, seemingly wrought from darkness.

Adora’s shield springs to her back, and Catra and her advance on the podium.

Prime backpedals. “No! This can’t be! Impossible!”

He trips over a tube and falls.

Adora and Catra come to a stop, standing over him.

“Don’t hurt him!” Entrapta says. “That’s Hordak’s body.”

Catra glances over at her. “Oh, don’t worry, I know. We’ll get him back to you good as new.”

“So, what _do_ we do with him?” Adora asks.

“I’m going to get some vengeance,” Catra says.

She grabs Prime-in-Hordak by the collar, one handed, and pulls him up, lifting him effortlessly from the ground.

“I need some starlight,” she says.

Adora puts her hand on Hordak’s chest, and channels. Hordak lights up from inside; like he’s about to explode.

Catra puts two fingers together under his nose, and _pulls_ on thin air.

From Hordak’s nose, comes _something._

Grey and oily, iridescently green, and _liquid_ yet _cohesive._

Hordak falls to his knees.

The mass falls on the ground and writhes, undulating. Then it seemingly gets its bearings and forms a rudimentary body. Arms, legs, a head with four asymmetrical green eyes, a maw full of teeth. It’s barely three feet tall, and immediately upon gaining locomotion, it tries to run.

Catra’s tail picks it up. It bites into her appendage, only to find her fur becoming sharp spines.

“Is that Prime?” Adora asks.

“Yep.”

“ _Unhand me, you monster! I am the emperor of the known universe! By my wrath you shall know the light of Prime and have blessed peace!_ ” he rasps.

Catra puts Bane under Prime’s throat. “Shut up.”

To his credit, he does.

“What are you going to do with him?” Adora asks.

Catra looks into the four green eyes. “We can’t kill him.”

“What?”

“He’s a bit like us. Or maybe he once was. If we destroy him, we’ll just get a new incarnation of Prime, taking hold of a clone and starting the work of building a galactic empire once more. He’s rigged the reincarnation game or something,” Catra says.

“Oh.”

“But that doesn’t mean we can’t be rid of him.”

Catra dismisses Bane and a flicker of darkness clads her arm in Bad News, the portal device.

She holds out the hand, and with a careful motion, opens a portal. The spherical wormhole opens up in front of her, but no light flows through and no light illuminates darkness beyond.

Nothing. Adora looks at the portal and it’s like her field of vision closes up around it.

“ _Where does that portal lead, little sister?_ ” Prime gurgles, wiggling ineffectually against the iron grip of Catra’s tail.

“To a place of punishment.”

“It’s the portal-thing; the one that nearly destroyed the world,” Adora concludes. “That’s where Angella was?”

Catra nods.

“Throwing him in there, will that create a _new_ incarnation, that _doesn’t_ want to take over the world?” Adora asks.

“No. His planet is gone. There can never again be another Prime.”

“ _Please,_ ” Prime mewls.

“You don’t get to beg,” Catra says. Then she grabs Prime’s diminutive stature, and hurls him into the portal. With another gesture, she closes it, this time with no fuss. As is only right and proper after all the trouble that place of Nothing has given her. It took her tail. Now she owns it.

And then it’s over.

“There. He’s gone.” she says.

“Good riddance,” Adora says.

Catra helps Hordak to his feet. “You okay there, old friend?”

“Thank you, Catra,” Hordak says. He turns to Adora. “You. You have to tell everyone. Right away. My bothers, they— They need to know.”

Adora nods. She looks to Entrapta, who hurries off to fetch broadcasting equipment. Four blackguards fall in step behind her for protection.

“Do you have paper and a pen?” Hordak asks. “There are some things you need to say in a certain way.”

* * *

" _Hello. I am She-Ra. Prime is no more._

" _Please, all you who resisted his rule, have mercy on the clones. We’re about to enter a new age for our galaxy, and it behoves us to make it better than the one that came before._

" _Let us thereforen ot herald the passing of time with meaningless blooshed. They are lost, without him. Afraid. Show them kindness, negotiate, give them a way out._

" _And, to you, brothers of Prime. I’m sorry we slew your big brother. I hope with time you’ll come to forgive us._

“ _She-Ra out._ ”

* * *

“Do you think that will help?” Catra asks Hordak.

“If it prevents even one retributive killing, then I shall consider it a success.”

“Why do you care about them?”

Hordak looks at her. “Because they are who I was when I lost Prime. I shall not want for any of them to walk in my footsteps. Having Prime in my head… I saw how little he truly cares. Wrodak would resent me if I didn’t do my utmost to spite that lack of sentiment.”

Adora finishes the speech. She had an unusually easy time reading Hordak’s cursive, come to think of it.

Entrapta comes up to Hordak and hugs him around the waist. “Let’s go home,” she says.

Catra looks over at the clones sitting corralled together at the other side of the throne room, guarded by ten of her blackguards. “Hordak, are you sure we should just leave… Your brothers to their own devices here?”

“Yes. Not indefinitely, but for now. It takes time to learn initiative.”

Adora comes over to them, and then Catra steps them through the shadows.

* * *

This time, they come into the light in the familiar cargo hold of an entirely different spacecraft. The Swift Wind.

Entrapta screams with joy as she sees Damara, and they run at one another, Damara sweeping the smaller woman off her feet. Hordak joins them, and Damara, uncharacteristically gives him a chaste kiss on the cheek.

Adora and Catra stands back from the reunion, quietly holding hands.

“`Adora,`” Hope says, appearing beside them. “`Catra.`”

“Hey, Hope,” Adora says.

“`You should know, there was an orbital strike I failed to prevent. There's mass casualties.`”

* * *

Bow looks up at the hubbub, and is nearly blinded.

He knows that light anywhere, though.

Silence falls over the enormous triage hall as everyone stops to see, and all the moans and groans and occasional screams of pain subside.

And then the starlight fades, and there in the center of the triage hall stands Adora and Catra.

There’s a moment where doctors go back to tending to their patients, only to find wounds closed and critical cases restored to stable; or even conscious. By no means has everyone been healed, but nobody is dying anymore.

Indeed, it would seem the dead are waking up.

“Let it be known!” Adora bellows out into the room. “That the heroes of the resistance will not die today! Because in the stories, heroes never die! They win in the end! And I don’t see why it should be any different; when one day they will tell the story of how Prime was defeated and the universe was saved!”

There’s a round of applause which quickly grows thunderous, whooping and whistling. There’s laughing and crying, and already portals begin opening and the healed depart with their comrades and loved ones.

Glimmer stirs. Her wings are restored to their functional shape, but a few of the ethereal feathers have changed to lighter hues.

“Bow?” she asks.

“Hey,” he says squeezing her hand.

“I can’t feel my legs.”

“Yeah,” he says. “You’re safe now. What happened?”

“I tried to save everyone. Almost made it too. Did… Did we win?”

“Looks like it.”

“Bow! Glimmer!”

Bow looks up to see Adora come running. People, patients and doctors alike turn their heads as she passes. She stops by Glimmer’s field bed and kneels down. “What happened?”

Glimmer props herself up on one elbow, and pulls bow’s cloak aside. Her breasts and sternum are peppered in white scars; her left leg is a bleached stump, and her right is healed but not in a usable fashion.

“Here, let me—” Adora says.

Glimmer bats her hand away. “There’s people who need your healing more than me.”

“But your legs…”

“I’ll get this awfulness amputated, and then I’ll get myself fitted for some cybernetic prosthetics; they were good enough for Catra during the war, they will be good enough for me in peacetime. Now _go._ ”

Adora looks at Bow.

“I’m not going to argue with that,” he says. “Much as I might have liked your legs.”

“If you did, I’d divorce you,” Glimmer notes.

* * *

(Later, when all the pieces are put together, they will find that Glimmer saved one hundred and thirty seven lives in the span of eight seconds.)

* * *

“Wow,” Catra says.

The devastation is complete. It barely looks like a _landscape._ Indeed the most recognizable feature is the gigantic crater left over from the nuclear explosion.

They spend the next few hours working in the cold and dark, Catra ‘sniffing out’ the scarce survivors and the plentiful dead in what can most accurately be described as _impact regolith._ Fresh snow falls, from the vaporized and crushed glacial ice.

Hundreds and hundreds of Catra’s blackguards exhume corpses for Adora to revive the ones who can be saved; which is most, but not all. By the end of the day, over eight hundred volunteer soldiers have re-joined the ranks of the living.

Normally, this work would drain them both in minutes. This time it doesn’t.

They find Scorpia, just beyond the edge of the great crater.

Dead, to be sure, but surprisingly intact. Her armor has melted, and her skin where it can be seen, is charred.

But considering she was at the epicenter of an explosion ten times hotter than the core of a star, that is a testament to the power of the Black Garnet.

“Perfuma is going to freak if we don’t fix her,” Catra remarks.

Adora puts a hand on Scorpia’s chest, and unleashes starlight visible for miles around.

Then Catra imbues her with a flicker of darkness, correcting the color of her hair, skin, carapace, and most importantly restoring her connection to her Runestone.

Scorpia stirs, and attempts to open her eyes, finding them impeded by the melted remains of her visor. In a flash of energy, she melts everything she’s wearing, and it runs off her in rivulets.

She takes a deep breath of cold air. “Damn, I thought for sure I was a goner, there — Catra? Adora?”

“Hey Scorpia,” Adora says. “You were. Welcome back to the land of the living.”

“How long—? I have to call Perfect! She’s going to be worried _sick!_ Maybe even _mourning!_ ”

Scorpia stands, nude in the frozen tundra. Catra pulls out a shirt and a pair of pants in her own size, which fit Scorpia reasonably well; although she doesn’t have a set of magical gloves on hand, so Scorpia has to manipulate the spare communicator by voice only.

“Hey, Perfect. It’s me. I’m okay… Yeah, I’m not joking… I’m so, so sorry… Plumeria? Sounds great.”

She hangs up. “We won, huh?”

“We did,” Catra says. She looks at Adora. Then she realizes it’s been a few minutes since they held hands, and remedies that immediately.

“I can’t wait to hear what happened to the two of you down there,” Scorpia says.

“Yes you can,” Catra says.

Scorpia salutes the two of them, then orders a portal to Plumeria.

And then Adora and Catra are alone in the Southern Reach, on an anonymous stretch of busted-up terrain between the dug-in positions of two massive clone armies; armies which will have sufficient supplies to last the week, at least.

Urgent, but not acute.

Both of them stand there, trying to think of something else that needs solving _now_ rather than later, and coming up short, Adora pulls Catra into a tight hug.

They kiss, deeply, passionately, and for a long time, under the dawn of the polar twilight-like day.

“You know what?” Adora says quietly.

“What?”

“I could really use a lying down right now.”

“And continue what we had to interrupt two thousand miles down below?” Catra asks.

“Maybe. Or maybe just sleep for a week. And after that, a vacation.”

“Vacation sounds good. Where do you have in mind?”

“Anywhere with greenery and a big, sturdy bed,” Adora says.

Catra kisses her. “Let’s get back to the Swift Wind for now.”

* * *

They have the entire spacecraft basically to themselves for the entirety of the next day.

Damara has ‘parked’ them above Dagon Rock, and the three resident parental figures have left to do official resistance-administration business. The work isn’t done, after all; just the war.

Adora wakes up well past noon, and as she stirs, so does she inevitable jostle Catra just enough to wake her as well. They’ve been sleeping in the same bed; which isn’t anything new. Except Catra has taken up her well-deserved spot as little spoon.

Catra feels Adora’s nose against the nape of her neck. “Are… Are you smelling me?”

“Yeah,” Adora says.

Catra giggles.

“I love you.”

Catra shuffles a little away, and rolls over to face Adora. “I love you too.”

“It sure took us a while to realize, huh?”

“Yeah. Sorry.”

“Don’t be.” Adora says and smiles, and Catra doesn’t want to see her face contorted in pain ever again. “And good morning.”

Catra pushes herself up to sit, and stretches.

“Shower first,” Adora says. “I think I have rock dust in my underwear. I can only imagine what’s in your _fur._ ”

“Nothing.”

“What? How?”

Catra shrugs. “Melog bullshit is my guess.”

“I’m envious.”

“I’ll make breakfast if that’ll help.”

It does.

* * *

Adora comes into the mess, to find Catra with a skillet, plating eggs and crickets. There’s a pot of coffee on the bar too.

Catra looks up. “What, are you that smitten?”

Adora finishes towelling off her hair. “I just… I can’t believe it’s real. You’re here. You’re back.” She takes a seat.

Catra walks around the bar, and kisses Adora on the way. “And I’m making you breakfast.”

She takes a seat beside Adora, and her long, dextrous tail wraps around Adora’s bare waist.

They eat in silence; old soldier’s habit — eat, _then_ talk.

Sated and caffeinated, Adora leans over and puts her head on Catra’s shoulder.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

“No. But…”

“Yeah.”

“I’m glad she’s gone,” Catra says eventually.

Adora nods.

“And I’m thankful she decided to do one good thing in her life…”

“I don’t think she would like it if we decide we ‘owe’ her anything,” Adora notes.

“Yeah, it’d piss her right off. Shadow Weaver, if you’re there in the afterlife or whatever,” Catra says loudly. “We owe you! Big time!”

Adora giggles.

They sit there for a little while. Catra sips her coffee, and her white tail-tip swishes back and forth a little on Adora’s bare skin.

“You’re purring,” Adora says.

“I can stop if you want.”

“No-no. Just… It’s nice.”

Catra turns her head and kisses Adora on the forehead. Then she takes another sip of her coffee.

“If we ever have kids, we’re _not_ going to be _anything_ like her,” Adora says.

Catra spits, then coughs and hacks for good measure.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that concludes the sixth and final book of World War Etheria.
> 
> Thank you for reading. Please share it with your like-minded friends.
> 
> Stay tuned for some fluffy epilogues, because I just cannot stop mining this vein of feel-good fic.


	26. Thank you for everything, dear Reader…

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prime is dead.
> 
> The universe is saved.
> 
> Everyone is happy.
> 
> Terms and conditions may apply.

#  [What You Do With The Rest of Your Lives ](https://archiveofourown.org/works/29996871/chapters/73853169)

…

Glimmer stands by her vanity, supporting herself in part on her staff, in part by her wings. Her new legs are still unfamiliar enough that she’s in danger of falling.

On the other hand, they are fabulous. Color-changing skin, and built-in heels. Rather than be an imitation of flesh, she has chosen them almost doll-like in appearance. And they match her angelic strength, too. Entrapta has had no hand in them other than verifying the soundness of the final design and overseeing the attachment.

To show them off, she has sworn never to wear a combination of bottom and footwear that will fully cover them. Today she is barefoot and in breeches. The built-in heel — really a kind of extendable extra toe — serves to elevate her. She has set the artificial skin to slowly cycle through a gamut of inoffensive pastels.

“There, how does that look, your Majesty?” her stylist and barber asks; a middle-aged faun woman. She hands her scissors off to her buddy-bot — the civilian model, with the soft silicone padding over the working parts and a cuddly inflated exterior made of vinyl. ‘Huggable,’ as Kyle described it.

“Thank you, Betty, it is lovely.”

It was about time for Glimmer to realize that there is no controlling her hair. So now she has had Betty trim it down, leaving just enough for a flourish ’do on top. Her cow lick actually somehow becomes an advantage.

She fumbles with the buttons on her lilac gala uniform jacket. “Ah, would you pull up my chair?” she asks. “I need both hands for this.”

“My Queen, allow me,” Betty says, and buttons Glimmer up.

“Thank you. I think that’s everything for today. Say hello to the kids from me.”

“I will, your Majesty.”

Then Glimmer blinks away, to the study adjoint to the throne room.

…

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you like _We Can Do Good and That Must Be Enough_ then pleas enjoy the short epilogue story in the epic fanfic series _World War Etheria._


End file.
